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It’s simple, really.
There’s what Heeseung and Jake are now: friends, former bandmates, two people who both made the choice to step out of the spotlight, two people who have been sleeping together on and off for nearly a decade now, who are almost certainly in love with each other, but still refuse to admit it, still keeping up the same unconvincing game of pretend that they’d started when they were too young to know how it would end – or that it wouldn’t end at all.
And then, there’s what they should be: according to Riki, nothing at all.
Not that he thinks they should be completely estranged, like two feral dogs kept in kennels facing away from each other so they don’t try to gnaw through the bars, but then again – maybe it would be for the best. And he can’t lie and say he’s not jealous, or bitter, because he is, but that’s not the reason why.
They’d break their jaws with the effort to get back to each other, and Riki is apparently the only person that can recognize that as a problem.
He expresses as much to Jay, over the phone, and all he gets is a dismissive snort in return. “Yeah, because the rest of us have such healthy attachments to each other,” he points out, his tone dry and slightly exasperated, because this isn’t the first time Riki’s called him to whine about their fellow former members.
Speaking of, actually. “When are you coming back to Seoul, hyung?” Riki mutters, a little bashfully, because even though it sounds like he’s changing the subject, he knows Jay won’t be fooled.
“Friday,” Jay answers automatically. “After my last show in Vegas. And – before you start, yes, that’s enough time for me to re-learn all our choreography.”
“I don’t know,” Riki starts, his tone turning teasing in a way that’s designed to get a rise out of Jay, because he doesn’t want him to hear the slight traces of betrayal lying just underneath it. Because Riki doesn’t need time to re-learn their choreography. Riki never forgot a single step of any of it to begin with, and when they were told that they would be having a reunion concert for the 10th anniversary of their debut, he thought that he could probably walk out on stage with no preparation whatsoever and it would still feel like nothing has changed. Apparently, he’s the only one that feels that way. “You’re pretty rusty.”
“Yeah, well,” Jay sighs, “It’s not like I have many opportunities to bust a move to my songs.”
“Don’t say bust a move,” Riki says, then laughs a bit at the thought of Jay trying to add choreography to his current touring setlist, the classic-rock inspired songs that have garnered him a whole new demographic as a fanbase, made up almost entirely of women over fifty.
“You keep me young,” Jay says, laughing too. “But hey, if you really need a buffer between you and the lovebirds, there are other options until I get there. You know Sunoo loves nothing more than keeping Heeseung from getting laid.”
Riki wrinkles his nose at the word lovebirds, and shakes his head even though Jay can’t actually see him. “Sunoo’s still on vacation.”
“Jesus,” Jay mutters. “How long has he been gone now?”
“Like, three months, on and off. He was in Seoul for a week not that long ago, but only to film some ads, and now I think he’s in the Maldives again. He just keeps sending me photos from the middle of the ocean without any context.”
“He might as well just sell his apartment and start living on a yacht full time,” Jay says.
“Yeah, but then where would Jungwon hide out when you come back and get drunk and show up at his?”
“Oh, shut up,” Jay sighs. “I thought this was supposed to be about your shitty love life, not mine.”
“It’s not about –” Riki starts, then cuts himself off, because he didn’t quite make his tone sound sure enough before his attempt was made. “It’s not about that. That’s not the reason I don’t think they should see each other.”
“Really?” Jay asks, still sounding unconvinced, even though Riki had done such a good job of sounding convincing. “Because the rest of us are all fine with it. The rest of us have always been fine with it.”
And, yeah. That may be true. But the rest of them, as close as they all may have been, as they still are, for the most part, weren’t close enough to this particular issue to see it the way Riki always has.
He remembers everything about what went down between Heeseung and Jake, what continues to go down between them, because he remembers everything about that time of their lives, has clung to every small detail obsessively over the last three years, refusing to loosen his grip enough to let go of, for example, their choreography, even when he knew it was ultimately holding him back.
He remembers all of it, all the albums, all the songs, all the endless tours and grueling schedules. More than that, though, he remembers all the quiet moments, the human ones, the ones where he really felt like he was a part of a team, a family, where he grew into someone who carried a little bit of everyone around him inside of his heart, where he fell a little in love with all of them. And most of all, as much as he’d like to forget, he remembers the moment he realized it couldn’t last forever, whether they wanted it to or not.
He remembers the words of their manager that day, the pitiful, you’re the youngest, so you’ve still got a decent chance of redebuting with another group, the bitter taste the idea left in his mouth, the way he recoiled in disgust when it was officially pitched to him a few days later, in a meeting room filled with the unfamiliar faces of the executives of the branch of the company he was being moved to in the wake of the fiery end of theirs, the one they once helped build from the ground up, the seven of them, together. He remembers the way he got up and left without a word, the way his feet carried him to Heeseung’s studio, the one that he would move out of no more than nine months later, punching in the four digit code – one-one-three-zero – and slumping into his hold when he opens his arms in invitation, feeling like a small child again as he patted the back of Riki’s head and said, we’ll figure it out, Riki-ya. Together. I promise.
But Heeseung would move out of his studio nine months after that– and basically disappear completely, leaving the company, enlisting earlier than he had to, returning to the industry as a producer first and foremost – and Riki would be left feeling like he was still waiting for instruction from someone, anyone who truly wanted what was best for him, even though at that point, he was having trouble figuring out who exactly that was. Because Heeseung left, and promised nothing would change, but then he stopped picking up Riki’s calls, and that was the definition of change for them. Because Jake went back to Australia only a few weeks after they got the bad news, claiming a need for some normalcy and a lack of desire to redebut anytime soon, and he tried his best to keep Riki close, but the distance between them made it almost impossible.
They were all still there, in all the ways they could be, even when they went their separate ways. Save for Jake, they all still lived in Seoul, still crossed paths both by chance and by design, still kept in touch to a slightly concerning degree, still loved each other, still cared, but Riki never felt more alone.
He put out a few mini albums, did the promotional rounds and pretended he was invested in the trajectory of his career, but the half-hearted charade wasn’t enough to actually take it there, to get him to the level that someone like Jungwon was operating at, maintaining all their popularity and then some with only a few solo releases, cementing his status as the nation’s grandson or whatever they were referring to him as now.
Riki just didn’t have it in him to stand on a stage by himself and pretend it didn’t feel eerily, unsettlingly wrong.
He doesn’t resent the others for finding their footing where he continued to stumble. He doesn’t feel jealousy, when he watches Jungwon’s comeback stage or a shaky, pixelated livestream of one of Jay’s overseas concerts. He never misses an episode of Sunghoon or Sunoo’s respective newest dramas, and when any of them call, he picks up.
When Jake posts a rare vlog on the personal YouTube channel he opened a few months after stepping out of the spotlight, Riki drops everything he’s doing to watch it, and finds himself tapping his thumb on the left side of his phone screen to rewind every time he hears the endearing squeak of his laughter from behind the camera, and when the video ends, he finds himself pressing the call button under Jake’s contact to hear it for himself. He doesn’t resent him for leaving. He just misses him.
Heeseung, though, is a bit of a different story. Because Heeseung didn’t call at all, for a while there, and he didn’t pick up Riki’s calls, and he didn’t leave, not really, but he didn’t exactly stay, either. He left the company, but so did Jay, and Sunghoon, and Sunoo, but all of them managed to keep in touch just fine.
Still, it’s not that he resents Heeseung. Even though he made Riki a promise, even though he was supposed to guide him the same way he always has, it’s not his fault that he couldn’t follow through, just like it’s not his fault that it all ended in the first place.
But if Riki does resent Heeseung, just a little bit, he doesn’t think anyone could blame him for that. After all, no one else ever will, because like Jay said, the rest of them were fine with what happened between Heeseung and Jake, what’s still happening.
But they just don’t remember it as well as Riki does.
More importantly, there’s what Riki and Jake are now: former bandmates, solo artists only in technicality, and friends, who see each other basically every day now, because Jake moved back to Seoul and demanded a key to his apartment and never really stopped babying him, no matter how much Riki has tried to convince him that they’re equals now, more than ten years after they met.
And there’s what they could be: according to Riki, anything. Everything, probably, if only Jake would let it happen, if only they weren’t both still stuck in the past.
“You can’t just live off of takeout,” Jake mutters from where he’s standing in front of Riki’s open fridge, scanning the mostly empty shelves and frowning exaggeratedly in disapproval.
“Says you,” Riki says automatically, because he’s still stuck in the past.
“Excuse me,” Jake huffs, shutting the fridge and turning to face him properly, leaning against the kitchen island beside him and putting a hand on his hip, smiling brightly in a way that makes an all too familiar pit form in Riki’s stomach. “I’m a great chef now. I thought you watched my cooking vlog.”
Riki hums noncommittally, even though he’s probably watched it five times all the way through, more than that if he was willing to count all the times he scrubbed through the video until he got to the close-up on his hands while he learned how to slice onions.
“I’ll make some meals for you,” Jake says, almost absentmindedly, turning away again in favour of going through his cupboards. “You can freeze them.”
“I do know how to cook for myself,” Riki lies, taking an instinctual step closer to where Jake had retreated. “I just – I’m busy.”
Jake shoots him a doubtful glance, and Riki feels a small pang of irritation, shapeless and brief, and not even truly directed at Jake, because it never is, because it never could be. “Doing what?”
“My job,” Riki says, offense leaking into his tone. “I do have one of those, you know.”
“Yeah, but –” Jake starts, then cuts himself off. Riki can probably guess the end of his sentence just fine. It’s not the same, he probably would have said, because everyone else can acknowledge that just fine, the fact that their lives have changed, that they’re no longer all idols with punishing schedules that leave no time for taking care of oneself. No one else still lives that way, no one except Riki and – well.
Bitterness overtakes his next words, fueled by the sentence Jake never finished, by all the space he left open for assumptions. “Heeseung’s not the only one with stuff going on, you know. He’s not the only one with a good excuse.”
Jake looks over his shoulder, staring at Riki for a long moment, his expression steeling and then softening in less than a second, because despite how it seems, Riki really isn’t alone in being stuck in the past.
Jake’s always been the best at making excuses for Heeseung, at coming up with logical fallacies for his distance, his perceived disinterest, his vacant stares and half-hearted words. Riki’s always been the best at holding it all against him regardless, even if he doesn’t really want to, even if he doesn’t like what it does to him, to them. None of that has changed.
“I know that,” he says after a while, soft and almost pitiful. And then he turns to face Riki properly again, and adds, with a hesitancy that tells him exactly what he’s about to say, “He misses you, you know.”
Riki resists the urge to roll his eyes. “Not enough to call, though,” he mutters.
“Riki,” Jake sighs, and it’s clear that he’s fed up with them, but Riki can still hear the fondness in it, the excuses he’s probably creating in his mind, thinking that if he doesn’t speak them aloud, Riki won’t hear them. He does. He hears excuses for Heeseung in everything Jake says. “You two are so much alike, it drives me insane.”
Riki barks out a laugh, shaking his head, refusing to dignify Jake with a rebuttal, because he knows what it would be, and even though Riki is stuck in the past, he refuses to stoop to the truly pathetic place he would have gone to without hesitation at nineteen.
If we’re so alike, then why do you only want him? Why not me?
Jake sighs again, and moves back to lean against the kitchen island, only – now that Riki has moved closer, they’re well within reach of each other. If Jake lifted his hand, maybe to run it through his hair in an anxious habit that Riki’s sure Heeseung picked up from him over the years, one that Riki himself might have picked up too, his fingers would likely brush against Riki’s arm. When he was younger, when they shared a dorm and even when they eventually didn’t, he would do pretty much anything to ensure an accidental touch was inevitable between him and Jake. He’d unsubtly stick to his side, and Jake would make some dumb joke about having a velcro baby, and Riki would hate it, but he still wouldn’t move away from him, letting Jake wrap him up in his arms like he really was nothing more than an overgrown child to him, taking what he could get, trying and failing to not want more.
“Look,” Jake says after a moment, and Riki won’t meet his eyes, so he lets his gaze drift down to Jake’s hand at his side, watching his fingers twitch like he was fighting the urge to lift it and reach out for him, and – that’s not the norm for them, actually. Jake never used to hesitate when it comes to fussing over Riki, not until he came to realize that he was sort of torturing him, after Riki blew up at him one night after an innocent and affectionate cheek pinch and let all his feelings pour out of him like a shaken and uncorked bottle of champagne. “I know that things haven’t been great between you two, but – we’re about to spend the next week as a team again. If you just… if you give him a chance, I really think things can go back to the way they were.”
The way things were. It’s almost laughable, to Riki, the idea that Jake thinks that’s what he wants. He may be stuck in the past, but when it comes to Heeseung and Jake, he never wants to be that sad, pining kid ever again, watching two of the people he looked up to most hurt each other, time and time again, falling in and out of love and pretending everything was fine between them. It wasn’t even about his crush on Jake, really, it wasn’t.
Okay. Maybe it was. Maybe it ate at him, loving Jake as much as he did, being constantly simultaneously dismissed and reassured that he was loved, even if it was only as a brother, or in that strange, pseudo-maternal way Jake loved him most. Maybe it killed him a bit, walking in on Jake wiping tears from his eyes after Heeseung did what he did best again and put distance between them, walking in on the two of them with their foreheads pressed together a week later, giggling and breathing each other’s air, Heeseung pulling away to shoot a smile at Riki and ask, what’s up, kid, Riki unable to take it as anything other than mocking, bragging, because Riki has never been on the receiving end of a look like that from Jake, despite all his tireless efforts, but Heeseung didn’t even have to try.
“That’s not what I want,” Riki says quickly, even though he knows that’s long been the perception of him from his former groupmates, that he chooses to be stuck in the past, that he doesn’t move on because he doesn’t want to, not because he can’t.
Jake’s eyebrows raise, and his eyes widen ever so slightly, and Riki can see the pity in them clear as day now, and the pit in his stomach returns, but this one feels hollow, like the all too familiar sensation of skipping a meal, like the feeling of knowing he’ll just have to stay hungry.
“Is that really what you want?” Riki asks, and the bitter edge to his words make it clear what he’s trying to say.
Because Jake has been back in Seoul for only two weeks, preparing for their reunion and for the solo debut that he apparently finally felt ready for, and he and Heeseung have picked up right where they left off – not that they ever really stopped, as far as Riki can tell. Because Jake, three years ago, had the easiest time moving on out of all of them, and Riki thought he wasn’t stuck in the past like the rest of them are, that is, until he barged into Riki’s apartment with that look on his face that he only gets around Heeseung, and he knew that even he wasn’t immune to the lure of nostalgia, whether or not he wanted to be, whether or not he should be.
“I know you’ve never understood it,” Jake says eventually, carefully. “But – just because he doesn’t love me the same way you would, doesn’t mean it’s not good for me.”
Riki flinches, and blinks, and feels a quick burst of something – anger, or maybe hurt – overtake his expression against his will.
“I’m sorry,” Jake says quickly. “That came out wrong.”
“No, it’s fine,” Riki assures him, speaking through the sharp lump forming in his throat. “I’ve… I’ve always known that you don’t feel the same way, hyung. You don’t have to baby me. Not about this. Not about anything, but definitely not about this.”
Jake’s expression softens with pity, and his fingers twitch at his side again, and Riki moves away from him before he gets the chance to reach out and touch a gentle hand to his cheek, maybe even pinch it, the way he used to. “I do love you, Riki.”
“But not the same way you love him,” Riki points out.
“No,” Jake confirms. “But I don’t love any two of our members the same way. You’re all so different. That’s what I’m trying to say. You’ve always compared yourself to him, but – I can love you both because I don’t love you the same way.”
Riki stares at him for a moment, and then asks, in a small voice that he hates the sound of, “Then – how do you love me?”
Jake doesn’t answer right away, his eyes drifting across Riki’s face the same way they had when he picked him up from the airport, like he was trying to see all the ways he’d changed, grown, since the last time they saw each other in person. Riki didn’t think he found anything then, because he’s been babying him just the same, but he knows there was just something Jake missed, something that might be able to bring him out of the past and into the present – even though that’s nothing more than an echo of the past, right now, with Riki standing in front of Jake and practically begging him to see him as an equal, as more than just a kid who mirrored himself after the guy who was allowed to love Jake, as someone who could love him differently, and better.
He knows he could. He just needs Jake to know it, too.
He’s so focused on Jake’s face that he misses the movement from below it, the way Jake reaches out and finally brushes his fingers against Riki’s arm, but he feels it when goosebumps raise in their wake, and it’s too late, because Jake has already dropped his hand back to his side.
Riki’s always been too early, when it comes to Jake, and he’d long promised himself that he’d never find out what it felt like to be too late, that when he saw even a sliver of a chance, he’d seize it. He reaches out and wraps his hand around Jake’s, feels the familiar weight and warmth of it in his palm, turning it over and lacing their fingers together instead after a moment passes without Jake pulling away.
“Riki…” Jake starts, turning his head to the side before Riki has even finished taking another step closer. He doesn’t say anything else, but there’s a finality in his tone that Riki knows far too well, because it always precedes being dismissed.
Riki drops his hand, and takes a step back, but it doesn’t feel like a defeat. He’s never given up on Jake, but he knows what it feels like when he’s being told he should, and that’s not what he just felt. This is different, because the dismissal never actually came, because Jake never actually answered his question.
In the past, he would have said, I love you like a brother, or you’re my baby forever, or something else that would have been lighthearted in tone, but would have felt like a knife through Riki’s chest regardless.
Now, though, Jake just looks at him, and there’s something in his gaze that Riki’s never seen before, at least, not directed at him.
And suddenly, it doesn’t feel like they’re stuck in the past anymore. It feels like they’ve just taken a step forward, and Riki’s been waiting for that to happen for a long time.
Jake opens his mouth to say something, and Riki’s heart leaps into his throat, and then – Jake’s phone, discarded on the counter beside him, buzzes and lights up with a call.
Riki’s eyes dart over to it just as Jake turns away from him and picks it up, and his heart sinks all the way to his stomach at the sight of Heeseungie hyung on his screen, because apparently Heeseung does call – he just doesn’t call Riki.
Jake doesn’t answer, but he does type out a quick text before shoving his phone back into his pocket, and says through a sigh, “I should go.”
Riki scoffs a bit, and nods, dropping his gaze to the floor in front of him. It’s all so predictable, really. Riki finally gets even remotely close to what he wants, to Jake, and then Heeseung calls, and the finish line is moved further out of his reach. He doesn’t think he’s wrong for resenting him, just a little.
But – then again, Jake still hasn’t moved. He said he should go, but he hasn’t actually gone yet, still standing in front of Riki, no more distance between them now than there was before. And this time, Riki doesn’t miss the movement of Jake’s hands, lifting his gaze with them, meeting Jake’s eyes and finding a flurry of conflicting emotions in them just as those hands land on Riki’s face. Jake doesn’t pull him in right away, but he doesn’t have to, because Riki is already moving, already crowding him against the counter, because he won’t miss this opportunity.
There’s a beat of silence, of stillness, and then the hands on Riki’s face guide him into a kiss, soft and careful, entirely avoidant of any of Riki’s efforts to deepen it. Still, it’s a kiss, and Jake’s lips are as soft as Riki imagined they would be, and he can feel small puffs of hot air on his face as Jake breathes, and when he puts his hands on Jake’s waist, he doesn’t stop him.
It doesn’t feel like Jake is just humouring him, but then again, Riki’s not immune to wishful thinking.
When Jake pulls away, his forehead stays pressed against Riki’s, and it feels familiar and unfamiliar all at once, like an outsider’s memory now flipped to his own point of view. And maybe that means it isn’t really his, but it’s still enough to have hope blooming from the center of his chest.
“I do love you,” Jake repeats, and he sounds sure and unsure all at once, and then a moment passes, and he shoots Riki a small, almost shy smile, and that hope takes proper hold of him, wrapping around his heart and squeezing until his chest aches. “I’ll – I’ll see you at practice, okay?”
Riki can only nod again, because he’s going to be there, even though he doesn’t need practice, because he remembers it all. That’s the thing about the past – no matter how many steps forward he takes, it’ll always be right behind him.
And then there’s what Heeseung and Riki are now: friends, technically. Almost mirrors of each other, even after all this time. And mirroring someone means that there’s always going to be an original, an authentic, more vivid version, the one that the eyes are drawn to first, and Riki’s always known that’s not him.
And that’s what really complicates things.
Because Riki understands why Jake won’t give up on Heeseung. He understands all too well, because he’s never really been able to give up on Heeseung, either.
Even when Heeseung stopped picking up his calls, even when he started trying to set himself apart from the group in pursuit of the solo career he’d worked so hard for but eventually gave up on, Riki understood. Even now, when he gets to rehearsal and Heeseung isn’t there, Riki understands.
Heeseung is busy. He makes sure of it, just like Riki does, even though their lives don’t really look the same as they used to.
But Heeseung is also distant, and Riki’s never really been able to understand that. He’s always been this way, keeping them all at arms’ length even when it seems like he’s pulling them close, being a constant, sturdy presence in the group without ever needing to lean on anyone else.
It’s why Riki’s always looked up to him, always tried his best to protect his own image of him, putting him on the same pedestal that everyone else does, and it’s why he can’t fully bring him down from it, even now.
Because Riki’s always felt everything a little too much, has never really been able to let things slide off of him the way Heeseung could. It’s why he got so hung up on Jake, and it’s why he started to resent Heeseung, even though he knows it wasn’t always that way. It’s easy to forget, with the haze that his own jealousy brings to hindsight, that when he originally mirrored himself in Heeseung’s image, it was because he loved him, not because Heeseung was allowed to love Jake.
Maybe that part, the part where Riki loved Jake, came after he started trying to see the world the way Heeseung does. Maybe that could tell him something about them, about their relationship, if he was willing to listen.
But he’s not. All he can do now is ruminate on all the ways he and Heeseung are different, the way Heeseung is distant and Riki is here, in the practice room with all the people he’s always wanted to keep as close as possible – almost all of them, at least. Even if he’s not really here, because he’s sitting on the floor and sulking instead of joining in on the spirited conversation taking place around him, more focused on trying to hold Jake’s gaze when he catches it and find some meaning in it, he showed up.
That counts for something. That makes them different.
Jungwon sits beside him, startling Riki, because he was too out of it to see or hear him approach, and Jungwon huffs out a small laugh after he finishes the muttered complaint about what having two rehearsal schedules for the next week is doing to his joints. “You look like hyung when you make that face.”
Riki grimaces, and even though he already knows, he asks, “Which one?”
“Heeseung,” Jungwon answers. “He spent our first few rehearsals sulking, too. But he only did it when he thought no one was looking.”
He understands the implication, and he resents it, because Riki is not sulking for attention. That’s something he would have done in the past, but Riki is done being stuck there.
“He’s just running late, you know. He’s still coming,” Jungwon tells him. “He called me earlier and let me know.”
Riki looks over at Jungwon, studying him, observing the way he was slowly but surely turning back into the leader he remembers him as, now that almost all of them were gathered in the same space again. It’s instinctual, he supposes, in the same way that it’s instinctual for Riki to turn back into that sulking, attention-craving kid. “Oh, so he calls you, too?”
Jungwon meets his eyes, and smiles, soft and a little fond, not at all phased by the sharpness of Riki’s tone. “He does,” he confirms. “But he stopped, for a while. I didn’t hear from him for months after – after we went our separate ways.”
Riki blinks. He may have been putting himself a bit too much at the center of all of this, but really, he’d kind of assumed it was only him that Heeseung had stopped reaching out to. “Really?”
“Of course,” Jungwon says simply. “You know how hyung is.”
Riki resists the urge to roll his eyes. There’s always an excuse to be made, when it comes to Heeseung. It’s just what they do. “He’s still like that with me, though.”
“Yeah,” Jungwon laughs a bit. “Because you’re two of the most stubborn people alive, and neither of you will just pick up the phone and call first. When he stopped calling me, I showed up at his apartment. When he stopped calling you, you probably just let him.”
“Yeah, but you’re insane,” Riki points out.
“Maybe,” Jungwon shrugs. “But you’d do the same thing, if me or Jay or Sunoo stopped calling.”
“I wouldn’t go all the way to the Maldives for Sunoo,” Riki corrects. “If Heeseung wants to talk to me, then he should just talk to me.”
“You would,” Jungwon argues. “But hyung is different.”
“He’s not,” Riki snaps, then sighs, long and forlorn, when Jungwon shoots him a meaningful look. “I’m just – I’m tired of everyone making excuses for him.”
“That’s what you do, when you love someone. It’s not making excuses. It’s just understanding them, right?”
Riki clenches his jaw, and nods, because he’s always understood Heeseung, even when he didn’t really, even when it came to Jake. And he’s always understood why everyone else makes excuses for him, even if he did grow to resent it, at some point. They all love each other, in different ways, and Riki could never really blame anyone for that, even when loving each other meant making excuses for each other.
He never wanted to understand the way Heeseung loves Jake, because it looks different, and he’s so used to him and Heeseung being the same. But even though Heeseung’s love might not look quite right to Riki, might not look like what he thinks Jake deserves, doesn't mean it's wrong. Maybe it was made to fit a situation that wasn't built with space in mind for love at all, but the two of them managed to squeeze it in anyway, and – there’s something to that idea, especially for someone like Riki, and probably for someone like Heeseung, who still live their lives the same way they did back then, who still keep busy, who never stop moving.
Maybe whatever love exists between Jake and Heeseung was made to fit them. Maybe Riki just wishes there was enough space left for him, too.
The door to the practice room opens again, and Heeseung slips into the room like he’s trying to go unnoticed, but of course, he fails miserably, because not noticing each other isn’t really something they do. They’re all aware of each other to a borderline uncomfortable degree, to the point that being in a room with any of them turns Riki into a north-facing magnet, to the point that being without them feels like walking around with a missing limb, even after all the time they’ve spent apart.
When Heeseung walks into the room, when the other members flock to him like they always have, Riki feels all of it at once, feels himself be drawn in, feels a phantom ache in that missing part of him, and he’s not sure how that’s possible, but it makes sense, too. It makes sense when Jay hugs Heeseung first, and when Heeseung runs a hand through Sunghoon's hair and makes a comment about how it’ll all be shaved off soon. It makes sense when Heeseung pauses before wrapping his arms around Sunoo, because they still hesitate when it comes to each other. And it makes sense when he greets Jake with a kiss to the side of his head, subtle enough to go unnoticed by anyone not paying close attention to them.
And it makes sense that Riki notices it.
Jungwon slaps a hand down on Riki’s thigh, startling him out of his brief dazed state, and stands, sending an encouraging glance Riki’s way that makes it clear that he’s supposed to do the same. He does, albeit reluctantly, and when he approaches, Jake steps out of the way so Heeseung can pull Riki in for a hug, makes space for him, and – that’s something, at least for someone still clinging to hope the way Riki is.
But Heeseung doesn’t pull him in for a hug. Riki stops in front of him, hands shoved deep in his pockets, his gaze flickering between the floor and his face, and Heeseung lifts one corner of his mouth into an easy half smile, and says, “Hey.”
“Hey,” Riki mutters, and the air around them becomes suddenly weighted, heavy with understanding as the members still surrounding them unsubtly give them a little more space – except for Jake, who continues to hover, because maybe he understands that Riki has gotten enough distance from them to last a lifetime. He doesn’t want more space between them. He just wants enough for him to fit.
“How’ve you been?”
“Fine,” Riki answers after a moment. “Good.”
“Good,” Heeseung echoes, stiff and unsure, and then pauses for a moment, and says, “Look, I uh – I’m really –”
“It’s okay,” Riki cuts him off, not particularly wanting to hear him stammer his way through an apology, because it’s not necessary, because he’s always going to be able to make excuses for Heeseung, and he feels a little more okay with that now, for some reason. “I understand.”
For a moment, Heeseung just stares at him, his expression turning a little stunned, a little awed, before his smile grows wider and he pulls Riki in for a squeezing hug. Riki’s not embarrassed by the way he melts into it, the way he lets himself feel like that small kid again, the one who loved Heeseung enough to mirror him.
He does understand Heeseung. Because maybe he’s not a mirror of him, a copy with a flipped perspective. Maybe they see things more similarly than he once thought. Riki always thought Heeseung was distant because he’d moved forward, moved on from him, but maybe he’s been stuck in the past too, reliving his missteps and mistakes, punishing himself for them, questioning what he could have done differently.
They might still just be the same, the two of them.
And maybe if Riki recognized that, if he stopped trying to find all the ways he and Heeseung differ and focused on the ways they’re the same, they could move forward together.
Maybe if Riki stopped trying to shut Heeseung and Jake out of their own relationship, if he tried to understand it instead, they might be able to make enough space for him to fit into it, too. And if they did, maybe he would love them differently than they love each other, or maybe it would be the same, but that might not be such a bad thing.
He can’t know for sure. But he thinks that this moment, standing in a practice room that’s unfamiliar and familiar to him at the same time, with so little distance between him and the people he’s always wanted to keep closest, is probably as good of a time as ever to start finding out. Not a moment too early, and not a moment too late.
And now, there’s only what they will be: the same, really. The same as they’ve always been, because Riki knows the past will never really leave them, but also something entirely different, because they can redefine a familiar word, because they can change their perspective and see the same thing in a whole new light.
They all love each other differently. But it’s the same, in the ways that count.
Heeseung calls him the next day, and Riki picks up. Jake’s already on the other end of the line with him, but Riki doesn’t feel like there’s no space left for him.
It’s the same, but Riki sees it a little differently, now.