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They get into a fight minutes before going on stage. It’s nothing new—they’ve been on edge with each other since the start of the tour and foreboding feeling that this might be their last if they don’t succeed lingers.
But that’s not what they fight about. Even if their unit doesn’t do so well, the company has plans to set up their vocalists in their own unit, highlighting the vocal strengths of the band. Soonyoung fights with the CEO about the implications, arguing that Jihoon’s as good of a vocalist as he is a drummer, but Jihoon relents first and fight turns into something else.
A month before they’re set to spend two years apart, the first two years since they were kids, and Jihoon still won’t acknowledge it. Soonyoung can take him out to dinner and let Jihoon pick apart his form in the gym until he’s too sore to be brat and he can bring Jihoon his favorite records, but when it comes down to it—Jihoon won’t say it.
Jihoon won’t bend and Soonyoung won’t quit and somewhere in the middle of talking about the setlist, they’re screaming in each other’s faces while their manager flits around, trying to separate them so they can get their mics on and not broadcast their fight to the audience filing into the stadium.
Jihoon can’t even look at him when they get through their first set, and it suits Soonyoung just fine because he doesn’t want to look at Jihoon either.
It doesn’t stop him from ambushing Jihoon in the middle of their ment. They’re a temporary band unit, a project the label wants to experiment with to see if they can get more mileage from the same group. A money grab—one that leaves Jihoon overworked and Soonyoung spending the extra late nights with him.
“What was the most interesting part of doing Hoshi-Woozi?” Soonyoung tilts his head innocently. “Was it doing it with me?”
Jihoon leans against the drums, considering. He’s always carefully composed in front of the fans, never revealing how Soonyoung gets under his skin.
It pisses Soonyoung off. He wants to wrench that control from him, wants to see Jihoon bursting into happy peals of laughter the way he used to.
“I mean, that’s not exactly wrong,” Jihoon admits, still so careful. “It was fun doing it together.”
Was. Of course, they’re temporary.
“See?” Soonyoung snorts. “This is what I mean. You’re always like this.”
Jihoon gives him a look, and the fans murmur a little in confusion. Was he a little harsh?
Soonyoung suddenly doesn’t care. He’s spent a lifetime chasing after Jihoon, and just when they’re on the precipice of things changing, Jihoon backs away, acting like enlistment will be the end of everything.
“So.” Soonyoung leans forward, setting his water bottle down. “What do you think of me?”
Jihoon blinks, lashes fluttering. He used to look so pretty with his long hair and long lashes. He’s no less handsome now, hair buzzed and bleached and Soonyoung sees his future in him.
A silent future, if Jihoon won’t answer.
He has to know, what Soonyoung is asking.
“You don’t really show your affection in front of other people like that,” Soonyoung points out, injecting a forced sense of casualness into his tone. They have an audience, all these people that are here to watch them perform. To hear their music.
Jihoon gives him a weird look. “That’s true, I don’t.”
Soonyoung leans forward even further. Jihoon stood up at the end of the set, walking around the drums to stand closer. There’s hardly enough room for Soonyoung’s guitar between them.
“In that case, is that why?”
His voice gets too low, too intense. He forces a hollow laugh, awkwardly stepping back. Jihoon’s hand floats between them, like he was reaching out to pull him closer.
“Well, I guess that’s kind of true.” Of course, he’s admitted it before, but he hesitates with the mic at his lips and Soonyoung is hanging on to his every word. “And I also have that manly disease, so that’s why…”
He trails off. Soonyoung picks apart his words like a vulture, sardonic and caustic. “Oh, you can kind of that with a manly disease.”
Manly disease, his ass. Jihoon used to be so clingy to Seungcheol, the leader of the idol trio they share a label with, and has a particular soft spot for their vocalist, Jeonghan, and their dancer, Mingyu. He indulges their band’s main vocalists so much, doting on Seungkwan and Seokmin and bringing food for Hansol whenever the producer gets caught up in an album for the girl group down the hall.
He indulges Soonyoung too, he just won’t say it. That’s not a manly disease, that’s his denial.
“I don’t really like anything cheesy, but—”
Aren’t his songs cheesy enough? Soonyoung doesn’t say this. He writes of love and wondering of what the future would hold with it out.
And when the world presents him with his own, he’s a coward.
“—I love you.”
The audience bursts into cheers. Soonyoung took out his in ears at the end of the performance, so it sounds like the ocean around them, waves crashing into the walls of the stadium as only he and Jihoon float on the surface.
Jihoon looks at him with eyes a little too wide, almost panicked, and Soonyoung is twelve again, curled around his back and pressing his fingers against the frets.
“Let’s quickly move on,” Jihoon says, though he has yet to look away. “Hurry up.”
Soonyoung’s eyes are dark and his hair is dark again and even if Jihoon looks nothing like he did the day Soonyoung walked into their practice room, he is the same person he’s always been.
Even with all the cheering drowning out his thoughts, he’s Soonyoung’s best friend.
“Quickly, let’s move on to the next one, quickly.”
The cheers turn into roars, and the sea swallows them. Jihoon's songs have been ringing out around them, the words loud and clear for Soonyoung to hear. Just as they have been for the best ten years, not a single word erased.
Jihoon bites his lip and looks away. “Please.”
Soonyoung’s destiny.