Chapter Text
Every so often Keita is hit with the realization, the mirror showing a reflection of who his members used to be and who they are now.
During their stay at Planet Camp; most of them were all boundless, and anxious energy. All of them constantly keyed up with nerves for months on end because of the cameras never left their sight. Almost every waking moment was being watched by Star Creators and staff members, and even the tiny reprieves they all found in the stairs blindspot, the laundry room, and the bathrooms were short-lived.
While the experience of living with everyone was wonderful: never being truly alone even when they switched dorms entirely, they were still shrouded in the stress of the actual competition and how the editing portrayed them as people. They couldn’t all truly get to know each other without having to watch their words, and they couldn’t talk and share most of their interests outside of music because of the technology being taken from them. The forfeit for being on this show and in that dorm felt stupid, but they were all desperate for this chance to achieve their dream in any way possible, even if it meant they were to spend six months with only child-locked iPads as a connection to the outside world.
Keita has been a trainee for so long, even if his time as a rookie idol being short-lived under the management of his company, so he’s used to constant string of people coming and going.
He’s seen so much of his younger self in the people he’s met during Boys Planet. The drive to continue even when you’re too tired to dance anymore, to sing until your voice breaks, to try over and over until you’re at a breaking point. It’s why, even at the bitter end, when Keita got nothing once again: he still felt proud of the people he’s met during the six or so months that they’ve been collected here (even when the numbers continued to dwindle). He pushed down the boiling over disappointment, and forced a smile onto his face, hugging those around him and congratulating the new friends they all made.
When it was all over, he left for the dorm that he’s been staying at with his group members; no matter how much the cipher shrinks by day. He sits in his bed as the late hours tick into early hours, trying to tell himself that everything will be fine, when it most definitely won’t be. The older he gets in this industry, the more he is treated like second-hand goods, and the more he can’t stand the way his dream has been treated like something to be used against him. He has talent and skill that he’s spent a decade honing, and no matter how much he’s continued to try it’s never good enough.
Staying in a mostly dead dorm after experiencing the liveliness of Planet Camp: the pieces of home he could find other trainees who came to Korea just like him, and the constant buzz and noise even when it reached the morning, felt like sucking the life out of him. He had gotten used to everyone, to their voices and antics, to random groups of people bursting into the room just to do something and check in on others. The hard grasp that longing has on him is hard to swallow, because he should be happy that he got to meet more people, he got to make more peers who are just as passionate and interested in music as him, so he can’t help but be hollowed out now that it’s gone. He’s never going to get to see them again like that; they went back to real life, to their normal schedules like nothing ever happened, with only new KakaoTalk group chats to show for it.
There was a storm of emotions welling up in him about all of it: asking his members if they were okay he auditioned in the first place as if doing so was some sort of grand betrayal, with the way even the shreds they got of performing on stage made him want to cry, and the way he was so close the whole entire time but he still failed.
A new feeling of guilt started to mix in violently when he opened his email to an offer for a project group from Jellyfish Entertainment. He hated that he felt relieved, that he had hope, that he was turning away from his members once again.
It took him weeks of talking to everyone, to his manager, to some of the other Boys Planet contestants, until he actually accepted the offer. The expedited reply from his manager made the gross feeling tighten its vice grip on his heart.
When the confirmation was sent through, Jellyfish hadn’t wasted any time setting up a meeting with all of the soon-to-be members of the group with all of their representatives present. The conference room had been so full of tension, the type they all tried to ignore with the happiness that they were all reunited was faster than they ever thought they would have been, in a group as well nonetheless. Though, they should’ve expected this, striking while the iron is hot is one of the favorite things entertainment companies love to do: joining them together to make them some money while Boys Planet is still relevant. That’s what this meeting is truly about, and he’s been through so many of these at this point it goes in one ear and out the other.
He tries to bury the bubbling feeling in his stomach as he reads the names of his new members over and over as the legalese gets tossed above his head, because there is a sense of turning his back on Ciipher that sits in the little part of his brain. Keita has hope; about this conjoining of multiple companies, about the people he’s going to work with, even if they were only friends on the surface level way that being on a survival show allows.
Settling into a new dorm once again feels wrong, but he bites down that boiling acrid pit trying to burst through the surface. He helps the others sort through their bags and hang up clothes, eventually finding his way into the kitchen to see how much they were going to have to buy for groceries later that night. The Jeunghyuns had made a big deal about celebrating big because they were finally achieving the thing they sought after, and Keita felt like spoiling them to ignore the swirling cesspool on his mind.
He scoured around the tiny kitchenette and all of the appliances and wares that had been left from the trainees that had been staying there before them. Keita kept an internal list as he went, and attempted to rejoin the rest of them in the lounge, when Hanbin stopped him, ushering him back into the doorless room with no warning. He had tried to ask what’s going on, but the younger wrapped him into a hug before he could get the words out, “I won’t let you lose again,” Hanbin’s low baritone voice whispered next to the shell of his ear, and his face burned up at the warmth of it. It’s not that he isn’t used to affection, but it’s usually never as close as how they were at that moment, Hanbin seeming to grip him like he was trying to glue him back together.
The taller of the two quickly separated himself from Keita and dashed back into the hallway, and into the frenzy of the five others as they continued to dither about in a discombobulated mess.
It was so quick that it took his brain a few minutes to catch up to what actually happened and what those words meant. His face completely smoldered for a moment, being flustered at the notion that Hanbin won’t let him suffer another loss. The younger probably didn’t truly know what the gesture meant to him, and he sure as hell won’t be telling him. Keita had too much pride at the beginning of this juncture of their lives to actually tell anyone of them how much he appreciated their existence in his life. (Now, the words usually get whispered to them when the night is particularly rough, when they all need to hear it.)
Keita had forgotten how touchy they are, much more so now that the cameras aren’t flittering around anymore. He figured he would have to just readjust to all of them again. Especially, he would have to re-acclimate to the fox that flits around them like the predator he is, ready to sink his teeth into any of them at any moment. (Which, as they get closer, Keita realized that Hanbin really likes to graze his skin with his teeth, never fully biting down but instead leaving a small impression on his tanned skin. Hanbin especially loves to nibble on the juncture between his neck and shoulders, always pulling at the collars of his shirts down to breathe against him.) There really was a lot of adjustment there, he used to not like foxes too much. He had a very much traumatic experience in his youth of seeing one of them dragging a dead animal in its mouth when he went camping with his family. There was also the negative connotations against foxes in a lot of Japanese folklore, and it blends over into Korean mythology as well.
Though, the difference between them half a year ago to now is quite funny, because they’ve all gotten quite comfortable around each-other. The months of practice and crowding together in a two-bed-one-bath apartment paid off in a closeness that long since excelled over the foundation they built during Boys Planet.
Keita’s just not as physically affectionate as the others, and tries to make up for it in other ways; making late night snacks for Seongeon and MunJung when they’re too busy playing video games to eat, helping Jihoo with his homework even if he doesn’t fully remember how to actually give him the answers, getting LeeJeung different types of Rubik’s cubes that he hides on his desk, giving Yunseo pieces of quiet when everyone is getting too overly excited about their schedules, and Hanbin…
Keita has been having a confusing standstill with himself about how he treats Hanbin, and how the younger treats him right back. They’ve been close since working on Switch, hell, even a little before that, but they were different people off-camera. The two of them are both the type to push themselves far harder than anyone else could ever expect of them, and their lives revolve around the stage in incredibly unhealthy ways. Hanbin is loud and friendly, charming and mischievous, hard-boiled energy as to where Keita is bold and brash, an acquired taste for most, and touch-and-go about showing people how much he loves them.
His Hanbin is in every way a fox; his speed and energy were unmatched, with wit and articulation that was unrivaled, he was independent and quick to act. Keita was sure he was more like the red panda all of them assumed him to be: easy to startle, laid-back when applicable, with persistence that was as strong as steel, and easily overlooked because of his size and personality.
The thing that Keita didn’t think about was that foxes are much more affectionate than people give them credit for, especially in the right setting. The amount of videos that fans have sent him of foxes at specific sanctuary when they wanted to be held, with ones excitedly running around upon seeing a person or a toy, and their excited little squeals. All of it makes Keita think of Hanbin when he started to get really comfortable.
It hadn’t been immediate, both of them to wound up to actually pay attention to the unnamed tension building between them. After their debut, when it started to finally calm down in the dorm, was when Hanbin started to treat Keita like the foxes treat the human in the videos that ENNVE had wanted him to watch.
Hanbin always treated them all like they’re precious to him, even when he was obviously too far strung out to actually help anyone with their dancing or singing, but during the downtime between comebacks was when Hanbin started to show pointed favoritism. It started with extra pieces of food being placed into Keita’s bowl, Hanbin stealing a sip from Keita’s water bottle during practice, the taller burrowing into Keita’s bunk when he goes to shower, or him resting his head on Keita’s shoulder and whining at him to cook for him, and it progressed with Hanbin starting to drape himself over Keita whenever he pleases. (The kisses have always been there, but they get more aggressive, placed on any piece of his body that is free. He kisses back, feeding the burgeoning butterflies that have taken over his rib cage, because their relationship is much more equal than they reveal to others.)
Most of the times Hanbin’s affections are off camera, in the privacy of their dorm or low-lit practice rooms, but sometimes Hanbin slips in front of the ensemble staff members. He holds Keita a little too close, or follows him like a moth to a lantern swaying in the sky, and he calls him too familiarly than he should. Hanbin knows what he’s doing, he can usually tell from the look he does between Keita and the camera while grinning like a madman setting something on fire. His fox is aware of what his actions breed, and doesn’t seem to care too much how many meetings they’ve had with their managers telling them to tone it down.
The cameras didn’t catch the moment when Keita started touching him back, holding his face and rubbing the pad of his thumb against his the ball of his cheek, always nagging him to eat more the way a long-time spouse would, catching him and playing along with whatever the fox wanted. Though, Keita hadn’t realized the line he had crossed by reciprocating Hanbin’s affection, because now they didn’t go anywhere without the other. They were like two pair-bonded animals, unable to thrive unless the other is nearby.
Hanbin rolls around on his bed like an overly excited kit trying to wrestle with him, and holes up in his studio with him even when he isn’t needed to record lines, and treats Keita’s clothes like his own. (Hanbin stealing one of his gloves during the 24EVNNE filming comes to mind, but most of the time it’s when he’s stumbling out of Keita’s bed when an alarm is blaring from the other side of the room, grabbing one of Keita’s shirts from the hanging rack and going to bother Jihoo until he wakes up for school.) It’s the closest he has ever been with another person in his whole entire life, and they don’t have a name for it. All of it happened so wordlessly, naturally magnetized to each other like ferrofluid swirling itself on a metal spire.
Every single averse feeling to physical affection was non-existent around Hanbin. He touched back just as much, craved it just as hard, so much more than he ever thought he would for someone who was essentially a stranger almost two years ago. Keita was starting to initiate it too before he could realize; with random moments of wanting to feel Hanbin’s back against his chest, or kissing his cheek during his birthday celebration with ENNVE, or pushing him against a wall so that he can burrow his head into his neck.
It had been a slow and dawning realization that Keita was starting to like foxes, he was starting to find their sharp fangs cute, and their boundless energy to be adorable. It was like a new world unfolded around his eyes because he realized that he had adopted his own fox, with his own list of requirements to live a good life. It also Keita took too long to understand that he was in his fox’s essentials checklist with a red underline and stars next to it.