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Moondae should know better. He’s the older of the two, technically, even if Bae Sejin doesn’t know it. So he shouldn’t let things like this happen – though honestly, how could he have seen it coming?
It must be because of the visual stat. And the charm stat, too, which was his secondary focus during Idol Inc. These days he’s made good progress increasing his vocal stat thanks to a combination of allocating a few points and a lot of time spent practicing. But visual and charm remain his highest stats. Even after more than a year as Park Moondae, he hasn’t become fully familiar with the consequences of his decision to focus on the two.
That’s as much of an explanation as he can give himself. This happened because Ryu Gunwoo isn’t used to being attractive.
Still. He should have known better.
Moondae and Bae Sejin were a set. Like a pair of salt and pepper shakers, as if they were manufactured together and sold together by the team behind Idol Inc. They had similar rankings, similar lack of skill, and the same hard determination to make it hidden behind a softer facade.
It wasn’t that Moondae liked Bae Sejin from the start. His first impression was negative, and he was a little suspicious that this Sejin might be a future drug dealer, even though he was pretty sure the other Sejin was the more likely candidate.
What he did like was that this Sejin was quiet. Mopey, but quiet.
So Moondae shrugged and accepted it when Bae Sejin (then still known as Lee Sejin A) kept choosing the same practice rooms as him and matching his breaks to Moondae’s. He had plenty of alone time anyway, during the hours others slept and he didn’t. It wasn’t bad to have company during the day, to be forced out of his own head.
They mostly existed in silent companionship, rarely speaking, until Ahyeon tentatively tip-toed in that night when he started helping Moondae learn the signal song choreography. Not knowing what else to do with yet another shadow following him around, Moondae introduced Ahyeon to Sejin the morning after, and the three of them practiced together all day.
Alone in their dorm room that night, one of the few places Ahyeon couldn’t follow because he was assigned to a room with higher ranking trainees, Sejin said, “He’s so helpful… it’s a little unnerving.”
“Exactly,” Moondae said, surprised to hear his own thoughts coming from someone else. He liked Ahyeon, of course. It was impossible to dislike him. But innocent helpfulness, offered with no ulterior motives, made Moondae anxious. “But he’s more scared of us than we are of him. Which is also unnerving.”
“Exactly,” Sejin echoed. “No one’s that nice for nothing. But apparently no one’s told him that.” He nodded like they had put words to something of great importance, and went to wash up.
Sejin would know that better than anyone, Moondae figured, watching him go, since he had already worked in the entertainment industry. But it wasn’t just the feeling that Sejin was actually knowledgeable and therefore reliable that made him feel suddenly lighter.
Idol Inc was an isolating place, and being Park Moondae was an isolating experience, but for a moment, someone had been on the same page as him. And that felt good.
From then on, sticking together was no longer accidental or one-sided. Rather than Sejin timing his breaks to Moondae’s, it was the two of them keeping an eye on each other and communicating, with a look and a nod, when to go eat and when to head in for the night. They survived the signal song performance evaluations and knocked shoulders in silent satisfaction when they managed to get into the same group for the first team match. Moondae looked forward to moments alone with Sejin, when they could drop the way they acted for the cameras and tell each other what they really thought.
It wasn’t that he couldn’t do that with Ahyeon and the other Sejin, but… well, he couldn’t. He couldn’t bring himself to be petty and rude around Ahyeon, who didn’t seem to have a petty or rude bone in his body. Talking shit with someone like that would make him feel worse instead of better.
You could definitely talk shit with Other Sejin, but then you’d have to trust him not to use it against you, and Moondae didn’t trust easily. He’d already invested all the trust he had to spare in the Sejin who always understood exactly what Moondae meant.
(“The way that asshole targets Ahyeon, it’s really…”
“It sort of makes you frustrated that Ahyeon can’t see through it.”
“Right. Not that it’s his fault.”
“Not at all. He didn’t deserve any of that. The whole thing makes you want to, you know…”
“Bite someone.”
“He’d taste terrible. Don’t bite him.”
“No promises.”)
Even when they were separated during the second team match, they always found a few moments in the day to break away from their teams and whisper together.
(“It’s crazy, did you know? Kim Raebin is another Ahyeon.”
“Too nice for his own good?”
“Yeah. There’s an epidemic of it here.”
“You would know, I guess.”
“What? Get back here, what?”)
Then of course there was the incident with the stalkers in Moondae’s apartment, and the way Sejin remained steady all the way through, from the moment Moondae called him back until they were lying in the darkness in Sejin’s room that night. Moondae kept trying to speak, unable to get the words past the point his throat choked off, and Sejin left his bed and lay down beside him on the mattress Moondae had been given on the floor of Sejin’s room, and the dip beneath Sejin’s weight beside him, the warmth at his side, was foreign but somehow comforting.
(“Go to sleep.”
“I was such a pain today.”
“Don’t be silly. Be asleep.”
“Thank you for coming back. I’m sorry…”
“Tch.” Sejin reached out, clumsy and groping in the dark, and put a hand over Moondae’s eyes to close them. “You’re not difficult to take care of.”)
During Testar’s debut, they spent any free time they could scrape out between schedules in the practice room drilling choreography. Lee Sejin joined when he could, but often it was just the two of them, Moondae and Bae Sejin, practicing until their bodies ached and they collapsed on the floor to talk shit (about the agency, about the choreography, about the concept of dancing itself) until they regained enough energy to wash up and go home.
As time went on, there was less time and less need for the two of them to put in so much more practice than the others. But when they could, Moondae and Sejin still went to a practice room once a week, just the two of them. They reviewed past songs’ choreo so they wouldn’t forget, or learned trendy dance challenges to film for social media, or secretly didn’t dance at all and spent the whole time talking, as if they weren’t roommates anyway.
It was a much-needed break – from the chaos of the dorm, from the stress of being an idol, from being Park Moondae. He thought it was helpful for Bae Sejin too.
But this time, Sejin came to the practice room in tears.
He wasn’t actively crying, not anymore, but his eyes were red and instead of turning on the music first as he always did, he dropped to the floor where Moondae was stretching, drew his knees up, and buried his head in his arms.
“I’m no good at this.”
Moondae responded instantly, “Bullshit. Who said that?”
“Everyone. The internet. My brain. Lee Sejin.”
“He’s never said that.” Lee Sejin definitely knew there would be hell to pay from Moondae if he said anything of the sort, and anyway, Bae Sejin had always overestimated Lee Sejin’s dislike of him.
“See, you’re not denying he thinks it, though.”
“And since when do you care what Lee Sejin thinks?”
“I don’t.” Bae Sejin turned his head to peek at him, cheek pressed against one knee, sulky. “How do you do it?”
“Huh?”
“You look at everything people say about you. Even when you claim you haven’t been reading that stupid site with the mean comments. Which you do need to stop reading.”
“Yes, sorry.” Moondaeresolved to be more careful about how visible his screen was when he looked at that site.
“You’re not fooling anyone when you lie about agreeing.”
“Yes, hyung, sorry.”
“You look at the comments but you never get like this.” Sejin hid his face in his arms again. Even when muffled, his voice was bitter. “How do you not care? How can I not care?”
“I realize I’m setting myself up here, but rather than not caring, how about not looking at what they say in the first place?”
“I didn’t look. I just heard staff at the venue talking.”
Staff at the venue? Then Sejin meant the solo schedule he attended before meeting Moondae here. Moondae filed that away in his mind, though he wasn’t sure how he could find out which staff members there were responsible for this. It was one thing to sniff out rotten apples within their own agency, but another company would be difficult…
One step at the time. What mattered now was soothing Sejin.
Moondae leaned into him, resting his head on Sejin’s hunched shoulder. Park Moondae was not a physical comfort kind of person but he had been learning the language of it since Idol Inc, a crash course taught mostly by Eugene and Lee Sejin. Bae Sejin wasn’t as touchy as those two but Moondae still found what he’d learned from the others could be effective on him, as if Sejin softened like butter under body heat. “So what? I think you’re good at this, and I think I know better than them.”
Bae Sejin lifted his head to rest his chin on his arms. An improvement on hiding, but the glimpse of his face Moondae could see from this angle wasn’t promising. He tilted his head to see Sejin better, and proved himself correct – Moondae didn’t know how Sejin managed to arrange his soft features to look so bleak, but he could and he did. He sounded bleak too.
“Thanks, but you have to say that because you have to keep my crisis from causing problems for everyone else.”
Moondae cupped the back of his head to make Sejin look at him, the gesture less gentle than it looked, more an anchor to keep Sejin from hiding again. Holding firmly even as their faces nearly bumped into each other. “You’re having a bad day, not a crisis.”
“It’s both,” Sejin said. His breath smelled like the mints he chewed to keep his mouth busy, grinding between his back teeth to keep himself from snarking at Lee Sejin – Moondae could nearly taste it. “And I feel like shit because I should have pulled myself together before coming. Now I’m taking it out on you.”
“This is nothing. It’s fine.”
“It’s just that it’s all connected, I just keep failing, I’m not a dancer or a vocalist and I’m not even good at being the oldest because I make you deal with me like this. You know what the venue staff said? It wasn’t even about my performance–”
It doesn’t make any sense, but Moondae kisses him.
If he had to explain it, it’s as if wires got tangled in his head, the one marked “make Sejin hyung stop talking” plugged into the outlet labeled “comfort Sejin hyung before he cries.”
Or maybe it’s like a kiss is just punctuation in their argument, a period he’s placing on Sejin’s dialogue. He kisses Sejin quiet, tastes salt and mint, and says, “I don’t want to hear what stupid people are saying when I could hear you instead.”
Sejin says, “What?” hoarse and confused. It takes the sound of his voice to make Moondae realize what he’s done.
He’s still stuck in place, trying to understand why he did it and how he can undo it and what’s going to happen now, when Sejin ungently grabs his face and pulls him in.
Moondae should know better. He’s the older of the two, technically, even if Bae Sejin doesn’t know it. So he shouldn’t let things like this happen – right?
He shouldn’t let his fingers dig into Sejin’s short hair at the nape of his neck, shouldn’t pull Sejin closer and be pulled right back. Sejin’s cupping his cheeks in both hands, which is okay for him to do, but Moondae shouldn’t like it so much, and he shouldn’t fist his other hand in the soft fabric of Sejin’s shirt. He shouldn’t be thinking, even with his eyes closed, of how tugging the fabric up like that must expose a slice of Sejin’s bare skin at his waist, or wanting to slip his hand down to feel how warm he is. He shouldn’t want, or tug or pull or let Sejin kiss him, he shouldn’t be kissing back.
But he’s doing all of it, with the kind of stubborn, selfish commitment of someone who already knows they’ve fucked up so they might as well wring all the joy they can out of the misdeed before they’re punished. He doesn’t want to stop. He doesn’t want Sejin to take his hands off him. There’s something electric about this, about Sejin pulling him closer without caring that the awkward position is going to topple both of them over, about Sejin twisting the angle as he nudges Moondae’s mouth open, about the way he gasps when Moondae licks into his mouth first.
Sejin traces the line of Moondae’s neck down to his collar, running a finger back and forth just under the edge of the fabric. The touch feels both impatient and nervous.
“Moondae…” He barely even moves his mouth away, it’s just soft and mushy and mumbled between them. “What are we doing?”
Moondae squeezes fabric tighter in his fist, presses his knuckles against the warm skin of Sejin’s stomach, steals another selfish kiss, catches his breath, loses it. One hand is somehow beneath Sejin’s shirt, splayed on his back, half supporting his weight because the way Moondae’s inched closer and closer has Sejin unbalanced, halfway to falling, and Moondae should back up now before it’s any more dangerous, but he doesn’t. He lets them both fall, lowering Sejin carefully flat to the practice room floor. Moondae’s knees on either side of Sejin’s hips. One hand still on his back. The other beneath Sejin’s head so he never hit the floor.
He should have an answer. What are they doing? He doesn’t. He kisses Sejin again.