Work Text:
one of the things wonwoo hates about being in the studio is the wearing off of the novelty of hearing a genuinely good song.
when the producer presses the button to stop him halfway through his rap, he keeps on a straight face as he hangs the headphones back over the microphone stand. he exits the booth, and soonyoung claps his shoulder sympathetically as they exchange places.
“emotion,” the producer stresses, “you gotta feel like you’re literally aching to go home, and show that through your singing.”
soonyoung nods and gives a thumbs-up. the instrumental blares through the speakers from the 0:00 mark, all over again. the producer sits back as soonyoung sings his first verse, miraculously, without interruption.
wonwoo goes back to frowning down at his battered notebook. he’s supposed to reconsider some of his original lines, and rewrite — a process he’s been through countless times for the past week. he feels a dull headache coming up, and wishes he was anywhere but here. the grip on his pen tightens along with the building up of the tight coils in his back muscles, but he wills himself to cross out a whole verse and start afresh.
“that’s better,” the producer nods approvingly as the track fades out, and wonwoo looks up to see soonyoung crack a weary smile. “one more time.” soonyoung’s smile fades. wonwoo empathises.
it’s 3:04 a.m. wonwoo and soonyoung leave the studio and head back to the dorm a little past 5.
“that’s harsh.”
wonwoo hums noncommittally, turning onto his side and letting his phone perch on the ear that isn’t smothered by his pillow. he stares at the wall through the darkness, absently drawing lines on the surface. his eyelids are so heavy and his brain is drawing up a blank, which doesn’t really make for good conversation on his part. but he figures it doesn’t take much to listen to junhui talk about his day, so he steels himself to stay awake.
“i made a new friend today. his name is jihoon. he’s a fan of yours.”
“oh?”
“so i was in the library, right,” junhui starts, “and this tiny dude came up to me needing a charger and i was like, ‘i don’t have one’, but he gestured to my laptop and handed over his cable wire. so, i plugged it in and he sat next to me, and my itunes window popped up. he saw everything before i could minimise it.”
wonwoo snorts out a feeble laugh. “and then?”
“and then. he said, ‘your music taste really leaves something to be desired’, all drily, like he wasn’t a stranger i just met literally seconds ago.”
“mmm.”
“he said something like, ‘‘warm’ is good though, i’ll give you that,’ and i told him that i’m friends with the guy rapping the last bit. that is, you.”
friends, wonwoo’s tired mind notes, in passing thought.
“and he immediately perked up,” junhui’s voice reflects a kind of amazement, the way wonwoo knows it does when something genuinely surprises him, “and he said i was the coolest person ever for that.”
“really.”
“well- no. he said that you’re cool, and then he leaned back on the couch and ignored me until his phone was fully charged. then he left.”
“so now you’re friends with him,” wonwoo thinks that the word ‘friends’ sounds strange when he says it aloud, when what’s left of his energy is being used on reeling over how him and junhui are just that — just ‘friends’.
“pretty much,” junhui says, with conviction, “we make eye contact whenever we see each other in the library and say hi and bye.” he adds, after a pause, “and i know that he’s a music major.”
friends. wonwoo doesn’t get to point out to junhui that his definition of ‘friends’ is a very loose one indeed. friends. friends. friends. the word repeats itself in his head even as junhui goes on to complain about minghao giving him a hard time at dance club practice.
wonwoo falls asleep before he gets to hear the rest of it.
it was raining the day wonwoo left.
mingyu had driven them to the airport, fulfilling his duty as honorary driver since he’d been the only one with a license and a car. all throughout the drive, junhui insisted on connecting his bluetooth to the radio, which resulted in an involuntary exploration of one direction’s entire discography by the other unwilling passengers.
“you need all the pop you can get before all of that hip hop and r’n’b,” junhui said, squeezing wonwoo’s shoulder from the back seat.
despite the initial resistance, junhui had gotten all of them to sing along to, crazy crazy crazy till we see the sun. wonwoo had never laughed so much over mingyu yelling at minghao for thumping the back of his driver’s seat to the synth-pop rhythm of ‘where do broken hearts go’. minghao drummed away, ignoring mingyu’s threats to pull over and fight him if he didn’t stop. junhui made a solid attempt to recreate harry styles’ belt in ‘drag me down’ over the sound of the grumbling thunder.
in the midst of it all, wonwoo reached a hand toward the back, grasping on thin air. junhui took hold of it, and didn’t let go until they’d arrived at the airport.
the one hour before wonwoo boarded the plane was spent on poring over duty-free chocolates. the front aisle of the store was where mingyu and minghao discoursed about whether peanut or crispy m&m’s was the better option. the aisle towards the back of the store was where wonwoo and junhui stood, looking at the more obscure, imported brands and butchering the unpronounceable foreign names.
junhui slipped an arm around his waist as wonwoo stumbled upon trying to say ‘laderach’. leaning against wonwoo, he muttered a muffled, “‘m gonna miss you.” into wonwoo’s shoulder.
there was a hollowness to his tone unlike all of his outbursts that day. wonwoo hadn’t quite known how to deal with that. here was junhui without his usual sunny disposition to wonwoo’s relatively tranquil one, and it was all he could do to crack a lame joke to defuse the tension.
“hey. what do you call a sheep covered in chocolate?”
junhui rested his chin on wonwoo’s shoulder, looking at him. “what?”
“a chocolate baa.” the punchline earned him a magnificent eye-roll, but at least junhui was smiling again.
in hindsight, wonwoo could’ve done better.
even in their departing moments, he’d been taken aback when junhui had handed him his old ipod containing a mix of mandopop and cantopop songs for him to listen to on the plane. wonwoo was ashamed to have nothing to give in return but the silent promise that they were going to make this — make them work — despite the distance. all eyes were dry, under the impression that they’d definitely see each other again at some point in the future.
but it’s been a whole year since then. junhui still hasn’t visited, and wonwoo hasn’t come back home, not even once.
when wonwoo returns to the studio the next day (a couple of hours later), soonyoung is already there. he finishes up on his part, finally, and the producer leaves shortly after. he throws himself in the swivel chair next to wonwoo, yelling out gibberish in his fatigue-induced delirium. wonwoo ignores him in favour of writing new lyrics for his verse.
“how do you even read that?” soonyoung squints at the scrawling all over the paper.
“it’s written in code so no one understands it but me,” wonwoo deadpans.
“what’s the logic in that?” soonyoung kicks up his feet onto the dashboard. “you’re gonna reveal everything when you rap, anyway.” he leans back and sighs. “i’m so fucking tired.”
“go home.”
“the dorm isn’t home. none of us are home. that’s the entire point of the song.”
the scribbling hand on his paper halts, and wonwoo takes a while to mouth what he’d written to himself. he can tell that soonyoung is straining to listen, despite his humming. wonwoo writes a little more. dashes a line out. replaces a word with another. stops to think of a good rhyme. he’s got the melody of the song memorised by now, and it’s literally all he hears even when he’s outside of the studio. it gets to the point where it’s actually nauseating whenever the instrumental starts playing during his recording sessions.
“i can’t do this.” wonwoo drops the pen and buries his head in his arms. his shoulders are heavy with dejection and his throat is tight with exasperation. this is all a mistake.
he feels soonyoung’s hands grip his arm, massaging it. “hey. it’s cool. you can do this.”
“i fucking—” wonwoo snaps up, and soonyoung jerks away. he huffs out a breath, trying to regain his composure. “i just want a break.”
“we all do,” soonyoung nods sadly. he offers, “i can get you coffee.”
“please.” wonwoo doesn’t even like coffee.
approximately fifteen minutes later, soonyoung returns with steaming black coffee in a styrofoam cup from the cafe downstairs. wonwoo gulps it down, waits for it to kick in. it does — the fuel for inspiration, that is — along with an incessant pounding in the cavity of his chest and an inordinate heat sweeping through his body. he writes away, mind in a sort of jumble straightened out through his words on paper. the lines come out nonlinearly, barely making up a coherent verse suitable for a song, but with a bit of rearrangement, he figures it’s acceptable. he’s got the theme down, at the very least.
“good job,” soonyoung pats him on the back, “knew you could do it.”
wonwoo places his head on the dashboard and closes his eyes, wishing the hammering in his head would go away, and that soonyoung’s random crooning is junhui’s placating voice singing a generic top 40 instead.
it takes a couple of hours for the aftereffects of coffee to be rid of wonwoo’s system.
he feels a little better after breakfast with soonyoung and seokmin, both of them chattering away as if they aren’t running low on sleep like he is. he pays little attention to their banter, scrolling through his twitter feed and liking mingyu’s thread of tweets about a particularly disastrous attempt at baking pomegranate pavlova. exiting the app, he taps out a message to junhui, apologising for having fallen asleep on him earlier.
the reply comes in just a couple of minutes later.
it’s ok :) was time for me to go to sleep anyw. have a good day ahead~
maybe it’s what’s left of the adrenaline rush from the coffee talking, but wonwoo types out a long paragraph, something about idk if i know what i’m doing over here lmfao and what did u mean when you said we were friends and i miss your voice i miss your hugs i miss you. his thumb hovers over the send button when he finishes, but seokmin is nudging him and asking him if he wants to practice together later and he shields the screen from the other’s view, giving a hasty nod.
“girlfriend?” seokmin wiggles his eyebrows at him.
“he’s gay,” soonyoung helpfully supplies, tipping back his glass to crunch on the ice on the bottom.
“oh. boyfriend?”
“no, just —” wonwoo pauses. “a friend.”
a waitress comes by to clear the table, and seokmin and soonyoung go back to whatever they were talking about before. the three of them leave the restaurant and head back to the company building, soonyoung linking their arms together. seokmin points out a pigeon along the way and mentions his talent for imitating various species of birds. he goes on to make a demonstration, and soonyoung laughs like it’s the funniest thing he’s ever heard.
the practice room, with its glaring light and studio mirrors, isn’t exactly where wonwoo wants to be when he has unflattering dark circles under his eyes and a perpetually exhausted look on his face. but soonyoung’s turning on the music, and seokmin’s starting on the routine after doing some stretching, and he decides he doesn’t really have a choice.
wonwoo presses backspace on the unsent paragraph meant for junhui, and braces himself for another gruelling day of work, work, and more work.
a skype call from junhui comes in when wonwoo’s trying to write. he’s been staring at the empty document for the past half an hour, alternating between that and watching vsauce videos on youtube. he has other random tabs open that do more to distract him than help him with his writing process. when junhui’s profile picture pops up on the screen, it startles him, but he clicks on ‘answer with video’ with little hesitation.
“hellooooo.”
the low resolution video that greets wonwoo is one that he was not expecting. junhui is holding up a puppy, using its small paw to wave at wonwoo through the screen. it’s a brown labrador, and it’s wriggling in junhui’s grasp, so junhui lets it go. it sends incoherent key-smashes to the chat as it steps on the keyboard in an attempt to approach the screen, nosing it, and wonwoo wants to scream.
“meet coupsie,” junhui grins and creates boundaries around the puppy with his arms so it doesn’t stray offscreen. “i picked him up from the shelter.”
“he’s so cute,” wonwoo holds out grabby hands. he watches coupsie patter around and sighs. “i can’t believe you decided to adopt a dog after i went away.”
“jeonghan hyung’s paying me better now,” junhui shrugs. he laughs. “i think he’s trying to say something to you.”
the chat dings with incoming messages of jakdklff]] cdl and kiwueiro93.f;/ and wonwoo sends back ugly skype smileys in response. his fingers twitch at the remembrance of his unsent message earlier today. pressing his lips together to form what he considers a smile, he stays silent as he listens to junhui give a back-to-back recount of his day.
“— and joshua hyung hates cherries unless they’re maraschino, so mingyu finished the whole pack. you saw his instagram picture, right?”
wonwoo nods. “yeah, i did.” he doesn’t tell junhui that the first thing he’d noticed in the picture, rather than mingyu’s dark, cherry-stained lips, was junhui’s sweater paw, perched on mingyu’s shoulder. “he looked like an extra from the walking dead.”
“his lips are always so chapped,” junhui shakes his head disapprovingly. “do you think i should get him lip balm for his birthday? like, just a whole bag from daiso.”
“you should.”
“how are things?” the turnaround in the conversation catches wonwoo off-guard. junhui has coupsie on his lap now, stroking the puppy’s silky brown fur and staring at wonwoo with a somewhat concerned expression on his face.
“it’s— you know. the usual,” wonwoo moves his cursor around the screen, making slow circles around junhui’s form. “pd-nim is giving the new verse i wrote a look. i think he’ll call in soon.” he checks the clock on the top right corner of his screen. “or maybe he’ll say something tomorrow, i don’t know.”
“i’m sure it’s gonna be a solid one,” junhui replies, nodding.
wonwoo waits for junhui to continue talking about his bastard of a lecturer or the strange connection he’d made with his new music major friend jihoon. but he doesn’t, opting to giggle as coupsie licks at his fingers, as if wonwoo isn’t sitting right there, waiting for the abruptly ended conversation to resume. it occurs to him that his perception of being right there with junhui is distorted — the skype call could end at any moment, and they’d return to being separate, with miles and miles between them.
“i was writing before you called,” wonwoo says, and junhui looks up from coupsie.
“oh. wow. sorry.”
“no, i mean. i wasn’t really writing anything. i’m still staring at a blank screen as we speak.”
“i should let you get back to your work, then.”
wonwoo wants so much (more than anything) to ask him to stay. but it’s one hour past midnight and he’s expected to show something by the time morning comes around, and he’s still empty of ideas. he thinks of getting soonyoung to make him coffee again.
“okay,” he says, instead of the screaming pleas in his head.
“good night,” junhui lifts coupsie’s paw again, waving it. “this widdle pup luhhves you.”
in any other normal circumstance, wonwoo would’ve laughed and asked him to stop. instead, he quietly says, “i love you.”
the call ends without junhui’s further reply.
when ‘warm’ was released, junhui was the first person wonwoo had texted. it’d barely been a few minutes after the track was uploaded onto soundcloud, but wonwoo’s shaking hands had immediately reached for his phone. he typed, thanking god for the existence of autocorrect. junhui’s response had been prompt.
omo it’s so great wonu i’m so proud of you !!!
the next line of text came in just seconds later.
i’ll send it to everyone i know !! everyone must listen to this masterpiece my bf is apart of
wonwoo’s cheeks grew warmer as he collapsed on his bed, burying his face into the pillow. rolling onto his back, he texted back, thank you i love you!!!!
it didn’t take long for junhui to tell him, i love you too, with at least five rows of heart-shaped emojis following it.
later that night, wonwoo found himself sitting with a bowl of ramyeon in front of his laptop. junhui had his own dinner splayed in front of him, takeout from a chinese restaurant just a little bit off-campus. it’d been one of their frequent haunts when lunchtime came around. wonwoo’s stomach grumbled at the sight of junhui holding up the styrofoam container with chilli beef in it to the screen.
“i’ve literally been craving that for the past few days,” wonwoo bemoaned.
“i bought it in celebration of your latest release,” junhui beamed, clicking his chopsticks together. he had a bowl of rice along with some side dishes. wonwoo’s instant noodles looked vastly doleful in comparison.
“’s not like i can taste it from here.”
“i’m eating it on your behalf,” junhui laughed. “don’t mind if i do.” he started eating without further ado, and wonwoo dug into his own meal. there was a short moment of nothing but his own chewing and slurping sounds and junhui making noises indicating his satisfaction upon eating what they’d both at one point considered to be the best food in the entire world.
(wonwoo doesn’t think he could ever forget that day. it was the same day he’d decided to grow a pair and ask junhui out. junhui had given him an easy ‘yes’, shock of bleached blonde hair and toothy smile all but blinding wonwoo and sending butterflies down his stomach.)
“everyone — and i mean, everyone,” junhui spoke through a full mouth, “loved ‘warm’, by the way.”
wonwoo couldn’t help but break out into a smile. “really?”
“yes,” junhui stressed, nodding vigorously, “it’s like- the production is sick, you know? i mean, i’m not friends with anyone who's really talented in music, except maybe joshua hyung, but. it doesn’t take much for anyone to identify a good song, is what i’m saying.”
earlier on, junhui had sent him a screenshot to attest to his promise to send the soundcloud link to everyone in his contacts list. wonwoo had stared at all the names in the picture, wondering if pothead #2 and spicy eggplant, along with all the other creatively-named individuals in junhui’s phone would respond positively to it.
“pothead number three replied,” junhui continued, “i couldn’t really read it, but i think he liked it. i mean, i’m assuming he meant ‘sick!’ when he typed ’S-I-C-C’. either that, or he was implying that he wanted to give me a blowjob.”
wonwoo looked down at his keyboard. “‘U’ and ‘I’ are next to each other.”
“i wish.”
it took wonwoo a moment to realise what he meant.
“you got everyone’s texts right?”
“yeah, i did.” wonwoo had been bombarded with notifications from his phone during practice from his family and mingyu and minghao and jeonghan and joshua and even mrs. wen herself. it was then that he’d decided that he didn’t really care if ramyeon angel or caramel whisper liked it, because all of the people that mattered to him did.
“is this gonna be a thing, then?” junhui was almost finished with his dinner. wonwoo stirred his utensils around the remnants of the soup in his bowl idly, having finished his noodles for a while now.
“it’s a monthly project. all of the songs would make up a kind of mixtape, i guess, by the end of the year or so.”
“are you excited?”
wonwoo nodded. “i’m working on a verse for the next feature. it’s going pretty good. i think being in seoul is inspiring me lots.”
“you sure it’s not just the new gfriend album?”
“might have something to do with that, yeah,” wonwoo laughed.
the skype call had lasted for almost two hours. these days, they barely make it up to 25 minutes.
wonwoo gets an approving nod from the producer the next time he enters the studio. they do a quick trade — wonwoo gets handed the slightly wrinkled paper with the approved lyrics, and the producer sits back to survey the new lyrics he’d been writing for most of the night before. he enters the recording booth with fresh resolution. the familiar track plays, the producer skipping over soonyoung’s parts and signalling for him to start right after the hook.
he doesn’t nail it at first attempt, of course, but the session ends fairly quickly. the producer claps him on the back, that’s what i’m talking about! and wonwoo can only muster a small smile in return. he should be happy. this is his longest feature on a track thus far, and once it’s up on the web, it’s about to catapult him even further into recognition by the general public as a new artist to watch.
he should be happy. this was his dream, one that he’d been harbouring ever since he was in school. this was all he wanted to do, even when his parents had already sent him off to college to pursue a major he was really only vaguely interested in. this was the ideal life he’d described to junhui, before the first time they’d kissed on the rooftop of their shabby apartment complex.
he should be happy. wonwoo leaves the studio, rejected lyrics in hand.
soonyoung and seokmin are already working on improvising their choreography when he walks in the practice room. wonwoo immerses himself in practice and ignores his phone for the rest of the day.
they were roommates, first and foremost; later, friends, but it didn’t take long for wonwoo to develop a big ol' dumb crush on junhui after he’d moved in. this was when his hair was dark brown, a stark contrast to the blonde he had on a couple of months later. fringe falling into his eyes, voice radiating warmth, and perpetual peppy smiles on even the earliest of mornings — all of that combined had a stunning effect on wonwoo, not unlike the kind he usually read about in the romance novels he had in the box under his bed.
living in junhui’s apartment had its downsides, but the best part of the decrepit, graffiti-laden building was the rooftop.
hours after their first date, junhui had brought him up there in the evening, just before the sun began to set.
“romantic,” wonwoo remarked.
“that was what i was going for,” junhui grinned.
they sat on someone’s abandoned couch, watching the sky turn darker and darker.
“have you always wanted to do broadcasting?”
“pretty much,” junhui nodded, “i did a bit of acting when i was a kid, have i told you this? anyway, then i grew up and decided i wanted to do the behind-the-scenes stuff too. my uncle borrowed me some equipment when i was in school and me and my friends used to fool around with them all the time. we made youtube videos at one point. they were really bad.”
“show me sometime,” wonwoo laughed, prodding him.
“i will. we forgot the password to the account so no one can take them down now.”
“oh man,” wonwoo shook his head. “how do you live with the shame?”
“i don’t,” junhui shrugged. “we were young, we were stupid. it’s normal.” he squinted into the distance, at some birds flying over the horizon.
“i wish i could be that reassured about things all the time.”
“you seem to have your shit together,” junhui turned to look at him, “like, i feel like i don’t have to worry about you all the time, y’know? not like with mingyu.”
“i don’t,” wonwoo said. he took a breath, released it slowly. “i’m not even sure if i want to do journalism.” his fingers curled around the edge of the cushion. “i mean, i know i love writing, and i’m good at it, but. i’ve always wanted to do music. not this.”
“you could do both,” junhui suggested, “you can make, like, a mixtape and put it online or something.”
“i want to go to seoul.”
those six words left a temporary silence between them. it was something wonwoo had kept to himself for quite some time, and it was relieving to have it out in the open. junhui peered at him carefully, no traces of his usual smile on his face.
“you want to become an idol?”
“no, i mean —” wonwoo struggled to articulate what he actually wanted, not completely sure if he even knew what it was, “i don’t know. i don’t know. maybe. i just want to do music.”
“what kind?” the conversational tone was starting to return to junhui’s voice again.
“hip hop, i think?” wonwoo huffed out a laugh, “i’d like to think i can rap.”
“i haven’t heard you rap,” junhui nudged him, “show me sometime.”
simply nodding, wonwoo didn’t know what else to say. he wasn’t expecting encouragement, or anything of the sort (maybe he did) — he just wanted someone else to know. he listened to junhui hum a familiar tune, occupying the quiet air otherwise only filled with sounds of the passing vehicles down below.
“i think you should do it.”
wonwoo looked up at junhui.
“it’s your dream. you should go for it.”
and that was how it had all started.
“try it.”
wonwoo looks at the few pills on soonyoung’s hand warily. he’s pretty sure he shouldn’t be taking advice from the duo he’d affectionately termed ‘dumb and dumber’, especially not when they’re already doped up on their drug of choice, the ones they’re offering to him right this moment. the pills are white and pristine — disingenuous.
seokmin giggles, staring up at the ceiling at god-knows-what and singing the turning mecard theme song. soonyoung almost lets the pills slip from his hand when he doubles over to laugh at seokmin’s hoarse voice.
“take them before i lose my shit and accidentally dump them in the bin,” soonyoung waves the fist with the pills inside. wonwoo grabs it, taking the pills into his own.
“woooooo!” soonyoung throws himself on the couch next to seokmin, and they get into a tickle fight of sorts.
it’s been almost a week since the last time wonwoo had talked to junhui.
in that span of time, wonwoo had spent most of it in the practice room or the recording studio. working his frustration out like a machine, he at least felt gratification upon his improvement in terms of his performance. but his tensed up body and frazzled state of mind are both in dire need of some relief, and judging by the state of his friends who are currently looking too happy to be on the same shitty plane of existence as he is, he decides that it’s worth a shot. fuck it.
tipping back the pills, wonwoo takes the glass of water on the table and gulps it down.
sure enough, the pills work like a charm. half an hour later, wonwoo’s laughing at stupid youtube videos with soonyoung and seokmin, and it’s like all the stress accumulated from the past month had just evaporated. someone had brought out blankets from their respective bunk beds and laid them out for them to lie on their stomachs, feet in the air behind them like preteen girls at a sleepover party. for a while, it feels like nothing could touch wonwoo, like this euphoric feeling could last forever and ever and ever and ever, and he’d be perfectly content with that.
but shortly into a gory video involving zombies, wonwoo’s stomach begins to feel like a spinning washing machine, an unpleasant sensation crawling its way up to his throat. he doesn’t feel so good anymore.
“dude, you okay?” seokmin nudges him, eyes unfocused but the crease in between his eyebrows indicating concern. soonyoung still has his mouth half open, staring at the intense spurts of blood and pus on the screen and paying no mind to wonwoo’s change in expression.
“bathroom,” wonwoo gets to his feet, stumbling a little.
he makes it just in time to throw up into the toilet bowl, barely missing the newly purchased mat on the floor. his head spins, the whole word spins, and regret claws at his insides as he retches. the extreme nausea breaks him out into a sweat, and he stays in the bathroom long enough for soonyoung and seokmin to pop their heads in out of worry.
“oh my god, wonu,” soonyoung panics.
wonwoo can’t even muster the strength to be angry with them for his current state. he lets them carry him to his bed, collapsing on it like a deadweight. in all of his intense discomfort, he doesn’t quite remember soonyoung and seokmin tending to him and making him drink ginger tea when he wakes up the next day. they come up to him in the morning with apologetic looks on their faces, however, and wonwoo waves them off, telling them to get to practice without him.
he texts junhui after they leave, maybe out of desperation, perhaps out of exasperation.
junhui calls him a few minutes after.
“are you okay? you sound like shit.” the words hit wonwoo like a bullet to the brain.
“i took vicodin last night,” wonwoo croaks. he’s never hated his voice more than he does now.
“why? were you hurt?”
“no. just because.”
“you got high.”
“yes. i puked.” wonwoo stares at the drained cup of ginger tea on his bedside table.
“congratulations.” the disapproval in junhui’s voice is evident.
“what the fuck,” wonwoo says. “you don’t get to be mad at me about this.”
“i’m not mad.”
“you’re disappointed.”
“you went mute on me all week and now you text me saying you’re sick. i’m worried, okay, jesus.”
wonwoo doesn’t know what to say to that. so naturally, he asks the next best thing that’s been niggling at the back of his mind.
“what are we?”
“it’s not a good time for a joke, won—”
“i’m being serious. why are we,” the lump in wonwoo’s throat halts him, “why are we just friends.”
“are we not friends then?” junhui sounds incredulous, like he doesn’t know what wonwoo is asking of him.
“you don’t say ‘i love you’ anymore.”
“look, we don’t have to talk about this now —”
“no. we will. i want to.”
“i have to get to class, wonwoo,” junhui says. the line gets cut off.
turning over to his other side, wonwoo slips a hand under his pillow. he finds junhui’s old ipod, stashes it into the drawer of his bedside table under some long forgotten t-shirts two sizes too small for him, and closes his eyes, ignoring the tears pricking at them. he can almost feel junhui slipping farther away as the seconds go by, and never in his life has he felt so distanced from a single person like this.
wonwoo had only been on one airplane flight before the one that took him to seoul.
it was when he was 10, on a family vacation to someplace he can’t recall the name of. he has vague recollections of him and bohyuk fighting over the window seat (he’d won) and eating in-flight snacks from packets spread over the seat-back tray table, but not much else. the flight had been a short one — 45 minutes into it and the seatbelt light was back on, and he remembers having to restrain himself from going to the bathroom until they’d landed.
ten years later, wonwoo walked on board with his luggage, checking his ticket for his seat number. he navigated his way through the narrow aisle, trying not to bump his bag against anyone’s unsuspecting shins or knees. locating his seat (right next to the window, just like before), he lifted his bag with some semblance of the strength he had, lugging it into the overhead bin before sliding into his seat.
the passenger next to him smelled strongly of cigarettes and some kind of overpowering musky cologne. wonwoo had to resist the urge to gag. he turned away from the man, resting his chin on his elbow upon the armrest and staring out the tiny window at the wing of the plane.
the realisation that he was about to leave home was only now just choosing to hit him — maybe it was the unfamiliar brush of his shoulder against the stranger’s when he moved in his seat that triggered it, nothing like his brother’s bony arm when they sit side-by-side in long car rides or the material of junhui’s flannel that one time they’d taken a bus downtown together. wonwoo was about to leave everything he’d known for a future of uncertainty, and the very thought brought a churning in his stomach that had little to do with the breakfast junhui had made him that morning.
(junhui had actually cooked, using the milk to make scrambled eggs on their mostly unused pan instead of pouring it onto frosted flakes like he usually did on the daily.
“we’ve been together for almost a year and a half now,” junhui’s hand met wonwoo’s halfway across the dining table, “and this is the first time one of us has made an attempt to cook for the other.”
“that’s what mingyu is for,” wonwoo speared the slightly burnt eggs with a fork, his other hand in junhui’s grip. it tightened when he started chewing, junhui looking at him with an expectant expression.
“so?”
“it’s good,” wonwoo didn’t tell junhui that it was actually too bland, because junhui was smiling back at him and he’d figured that maybe he’d remember junhui’s smile better if he’d just work towards keeping it on for the rest of the day.
“liar,” junhui poked at him when he tasted it for himself. but he was smiling again, bright as ever, and that was all that mattered.)
the airplane’s rocky takeoff only added to the sickness wonwoo was feeling, but when he felt it being lifted up off of the ground, soaring away from the dots of the trees and cars and buildings way below him, he felt a little lighter, a little more at ease.
junhui’s favourite song was playing in his ears, and he could almost hear it like how he used to — from the bathroom with the echoes bouncing off of the tiles, junhui singing it in the language wound tightly around his tongue since childhood.
all wonwoo had to do was close his eyes, and it was like junhui was right there with him.
‘when i get back’ is the next ironically titled track uploaded on soundcloud.
it comes out precisely a week after wonwoo’s vicodin fiasco (and the phone call with junhui). wonwoo enters the practice room and soonyoung and seokmin practically engulf him with bear hugs, and the three of them make a show of crazy dancing to various girl group songs, stalling practice until the choreographer comes in to yell at them about making a racket.
at the end of the day, wonwoo checks his phone to see everyone text and tweet and direct message and snapchat him about the song.
you’re a fucking rap god
NEXT G-DRAGON HOLY SHITTT !!
dude like. i cried a bit u have no idea ur so great A+ i’m your biggest fan
he struggles to keep up with the respective conversations, sending out mass ‘thank you’s to everyone for the appreciation.
wonwoo waits for junhui to text him about it. he doesn’t.
wonwoo gets a missed call from junhui when he is at practice the week after. he calls back at 2:03 a.m., and no one answers.
junhui doesn't text him in the morning.
the one time they actually get to talk on the phone again, it's strangely awkward and neither of them bring up what had happened the last time they'd talked.
wonwoo excuses himself, says he has to head to the studio.
junhui mumbles something about assignments. the call ends.
wonwoo gets busier. junhui texts him less and less and less, and then not at all.
days passed, then weeks, then months.
before wonwoo knows it, it’s been a year since the last time he and junhui made any form of contact with each other.
wonwoo still sees junhui on twitter and instagram and everywhere else in the virtual realm. he doesn’t comment on any of junhui’s updates, being occupied with preparing for his debut after the mixtape project had ended, being busy with new people, new places -- his new life.
despite everything, he’s aware of junhui’s continuous, if not direct, support. because for every new track released during the mixtape project, wonwoo had consistently received positive texts about them from unknown numbers, all ‘thanks to junhui!’.
it doesn't negate the hurt, not at all. wonwoo's still left wondering where they went wrong, what had changed, why they had to end things without a real goodbye.
getting a closure is as easy as picking up the phone and sending a text, except it isn't. the radio silence between the two of them holds so many unspoken words too difficult to bear when they've gone so far in their separate ways.
sometimes, wonwoo hopes they'd somehow cross paths again. he hopes, much like the younger version of himself he'd left behind to pursue what he wanted, only to have lost hold on what he really needed.