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Jaehyun doesn’t seem particularly pain-struck when they reach home an hour before midnight. The day’s been long but gratifying for all of them. Woonhak can’t get rid of the flashing Inkigayo stagelights from the back of his mind, even when he takes off his shoes and goes straight to the bathroom for a long, relaxing shower. The first week of promotions are always the most exhilarating with a mindbendingly ambiguous concoction of emotions to reckon with.
He’s still reckoning with them when he steps out, towel around his neck, and knocks on Leehan’s door to tell him he’s finished and that he can get started with his nightly routine. His own bedroom is quiet and dark. Woonhak wades in without switching on the lights, muscle memory guiding him to his bed. There, he picks up the rolled-up wired headphones he knows he’d left by his pillow, pockets them and heads back into the living room.
Sleep is still a distant suggestion and he needs to digest the thrill and adrenaline. And there’s no better way of doing that than burrowing into the couch and listening to his favourite playlists.
When he gets to his usual twilight hour spot though, he sees Jaehyun sitting there instead. For a brief few seconds, Woonhak doesn’t announce his presence or call out his hyung’s name. Instead, he observes Jaehyun who has yet to change out of his outside clothes. He’s not sitting like he ordinarily does, with one leg folded up or an arm thrown over the back of the couch in a carefree fashion. No, there is a palpable weight to how he is arranged against the cushions, as if he’s under reversed gravity and any minute now, he’ll be wrenched from his peaceful position and thrown up into the skies.
Hands fisted on his thighs, eyes shut close tightly, jaw clenching. Jaehyun looks like he’s about to burst from something compressed within.
“Jaehyunie hyung?” Woonhak murmurs very, very softly, an instinct inside of him telling him to tread carefully, to not disturb whatever balance Jaehyun is maintaining on cloudy tenterhooks.
Jaehyun blinks open his eyes and looks a bit startled to notice Woonhak standing so close to him. He is usually more observant and aware than this, but maybe the tiredness he had hid so well in the car is finally getting to him.
“Sorry. Did you say something? I was— ” Jaehyun cuts himself off mid-sentence, realising something. When he speaks again, he sounds a little apologetic, “Uh, you want to sit here, right, Woonhakie? I know you like lounging in the living room after Donghyun and I have gone to bed.”
Woonhak stares at Jaehyun, suddenly overcome with deep, corded concern. Does Jaehyun not realise what he looks like right now?
“No, I don’t want to lounge,” Woonhak says, sounding frustrated. He walks around the table and sits heavily next to Jaehyun who only follows his movements with apparent confusion. “You look so... Are you okay, hyung?”
Jaehyun looks even more taken aback now, “Me? Yes, I’m okay, Woonhak-ah! Just a bit sore. We went all out today, didn’t we?”
“A bit sore?” Woonhak echoes, finding himself getting more and more worked up without fully understanding why. He looks away towards the ceiling and abruptly gets up. “Just wait a second.”
He goes to Leehan’s room and knocks twice before opening. Leehan is done showering and is getting ready for bed.
“Where is hyung’s bag?” Woonhak asks. They hadn’t allowed Jaehyun to carry any additional weight since a few weeks ago, and it has become a habit for Leehan to take Jaehyun’s belongings into his room, only returning them the next morning before they head out for work.
Leehan doesn’t question him. He hands him the bag and turns his back to Woonhak, trusting him to close the door on his way out. Once in the corridor, Woonhak digs out the ankle brace Sungho had bought for Jaehyun and goes back into the living room, not stopping till he’s kneeling in front of Jaehyun and putting on the brace on his hyung’s foot himself.
“Woah—! Woonhak, what are you doing?” Jaehyun flounders around a bit, never one to receive care without some fuss. He’s gotten much better at allowing Woonhak to help him deal with his struggles but it’s innate to him, this discomfort that sprouts whenever he’s shown the kind of thoughtful care he loves spraying onto others.
It’s endearing on any other day but tonight, it makes Woonhak even more upset.
“You stay put,” Woonhak says firmly, looking up at Jaehyun, his gaze softened by his unstyled, wet bangs. “Seriously! You think this is just an accessory? You should have put it on when we got in the car!”
“Woonhak,” Jaehyun places a hand on his shoulder. “Get up. I’ll do it myself. You’re placing it wrong.”
“Then teach me how to do it right,” Woonhak says stubbornly.
Jaehyun’s voice quietens as he urges again, “Get up. Let me show you.”
Woonhak finally stills his attempts at getting the brace on and hesitantly gets to his feet, a bit sheepish as he hands the contraption to Jaehyun. Jaehyun smiles at him, both grateful and bemused, bending to slide on the brace, deliberately letting the heel sit in its designated curve and lacing everything up as tightly as it remains comfortable. It’s not exactly the most convoluted process but Woonhak had been too frantic to get it right.
Jaehyun slumps back, sighing, “All done. Happy now? You realise I will have to remove it before I go shower, right?”
“I know,” Woonhak says. “But you don’t look like you even have the energy to shower.”
“Maybe,” Jaehyun admits.
“You should have said something,” Woonhak says.
“About?”
“About this!” Woonhak gestures at Jaehyun’s entire body in a vague spanning motion. “Riwoo hyung told you not to go overboard. You never listen, do you?”
“I didn’t go overboard,” Jaehyun says with a frown. He sounds serious, not an ounce of the goofy energy he radiates during the day, when maintaining a spirited mood amongst the team takes priority.
Woonhak shakes his head, “Maintaining the same standard that you do when you are not injured is the same as going overboard when you are injured.”
“Bullshit,” Jaehyun responds and he sounds like he means it. “I am really getting sick of this, Woonhak-ah.”
“Sick of what?”
Jaehyun looks upward. On his face is a complicated expression that Woonhak doesn’t quite understand.
Softly, he says, “I’m sick of being care of, especially by you.”
Woonhak’s concern climbs up. Something within him flinches at those words, at the rawness of them.
“Why,” his throat tightens inexplicably. He has never been able to control his emotions when it comes to Jaehyun. “Why are you sick of it? Am I doing something wrong?”
Jaehyun turns his gaze towards him and laughs, the sound subdued, “Wrong? You can never do anything wrong, Woonhakie. Never. I’m sorry— I phrased that poorly, didn’t I?”
“It’s okay,” Woonhak says, knowing that Jaehyun’s about to clam up again. If he thinks this conversation might end up hurting Woonhak in any capacity, he will swallow it down and let it rot in his stomach till it makes him ill. “But what did you mean? If you don’t want my help, should I call Riwoo hyung? Or any of the other hyungs? Are you more... comfortable with that?”
Woonhak doesn’t think much of his suggestions as he says them. He doesn’t have some special monopoly over taking care of Jaehyun and he’s more than happy to let someone else do the job if it will get this tightened look off his hyung’s face but clearly, his questions land differently for Jaehyun.
Jaehyun’s eyes lock onto Woonhak with an intensity that would make anyone else shy away from it. Woonhak only gazes back, worried and expectant. And as he watches and waits, Jaehyun’s entire being shakes and inch by inch, begins to falter, begins to break down. Tears form in his eyes, like they have countless times before, but Woonhak is stunned to see grief in them, stunned to see the depth of emotion he can glimpse so plainly, as if Jaehyun is finally allowing him in.
As if, even after four years of knowing each other, Woonhak is somehow breaking new ground with his hyung.
“You little—!” Jaehyun says, brittle, bowing his head and punching Woonhak in the chest, his impact weak and trembling. “You... You’re all grown-up, aren’t you? I hate noticing it. I hate it.”
Woonhak gulps down the lump of swelling emotions, instantly affected by Jaehyun’s state, his heart breaking at what he sees and hears.
“Hyung,” he murmurs affectionately, wrapping his arms around Jaehyun’s frame, sliding closer towards him, the urge to embrace him so potent he can’t think to formulate any comforting words.
Jaehyun doesn’t push him away. He melts into the hug, crying quietly within the hollow created by Woonhak’s body, allowing himself to take shelter in his warmth. Allowing himself to dislodge the myriad of things he’d been ignoring throughout this comeback — pushing and pushing and pushing till he reached the end. Or the pinnacle. Only a freefall would let him escape.
Without noticing, Woonhak starts tearing up, too. It’s the only response he has to seeing Jaehyun so distraught. Words don’t always help when the wound doesn’t have one clear weapon behind it. He can’t even pretend to understand what’s causing so much grief for Jaehyun but he knows this isn’t a simple instance of hurt or physical pain or frustration. It’s a mixture and it’s a culmination and all Woonhak can do is help Jaehyun release some of it.
When the tremors stop, Jaehyun gently extricates himself from Woonhak’s grip, rubbing his eyes, wiping his nose and looking drained of all energy. But his shoulders sit higher and gravity seems to have returned to normal for him. Woonhak feels lightened himself at realising this.
“I’m sick of this, too,” Jaehyun says, smiling wryly. He raises his hand and thumbs under Woonhak’s eyes, smearing away the moisture clinging to his lower lashes. “Crying in front of you and then making you cry, too.”
“Don’t try to stop yourself, hyung,” Woonhak says, knowing his eyes must look swollen. “This is just who you are and who I am. Why are you sick of it? I cry in front of you all the time, too!”
“You can do that,” Jaehyun says, still smiling. “But I’m your hyung, you know? I don’t want you think of me as someone you constantly need to take care of.”
Woonhak shakes his head, like this notion is absurd to him, “I don’t need to take care of you, hyung. I just want to.”
“I know,” Jaehyun says, patting his thigh. “I know. None of this is on you, Woonhak-ah. It’s all just nonsense that my mind has yet to throw out. I’m sorry I’m being so difficult.”
“You deserve to be difficult once in a while,” Woonhak says firmly.
Jaehyun laughs again. It’s his endeared-by-Woonhak laugh that he’s very familiar with.
“Okay, fine. I get the message. You can stop being so sweet now,” Jaehyun says. “Thank you.”
Woonhak nods his head and stands up. Mind made up, he tilts his gaze down at Jaehyun and says, “Let me carry you to your room, hyung. Don’t put any more pressure on your leg. You can sleep like this for one night. It’s okay.”
Jaehyun’s eyebrows rise up in bafflement, “Carry me? How exactly are you planning on doing that?”
Woonhak shrugs in response.
Jaehyun stares with loud affront, “You’re joking.”
“No,” Woonhak says. “Why? Will you be sick of that, too?”
Jaehyun genuinely thinks it over before finally relenting, “No. I— I’m fine with it.”
He throws his legs onto the couch and lies down halfway, allowing Woonhak to slip his hands beneath him and swoop him up, carrying him princess-style. When Woonhak straightens his knees and Jaehyun wraps his arms around his neck to stabilize himself, a sudden ephipany halts him in his tracks.
“Woonhak?” Jaehyun asks, concerned. “Are you alright?”
Woonhak doesn’t respond for a moment.
Because his hyung, whose strength and tenacity he had greatly admired since the first day they met, the hyung who has shown Woonhak time and time again that his skin is thicker than anyone else’s he’s ever met — that same hyung feels so... light in his arms.
So small, so easy to carry, so fragile.
Myung Jaehyun and fragile.
Woonhak has never ever associated that term with him before. Not even when he saw Jaehyun slump under the weight of scrutiny and struggle against the thorns of this oxymoronic job. Not even a few minutes ago, when Woonhak engulfed him as he slowly broke down.
What is it about the physical proof of it that makes the non-physical more apparent?
Because now that Woonhak thinks of it, is Jaehyun not incredibly fragile, too?
Is he not exactly like Woonhak — breakable, fallible, just as tenderhearted?
But why then, does Jaehyun not seem that way to him most of the time?
Maybe it is because Woonhak has always seen his weaknesses but it is his strengths he chooses to remember and cherish. Maybe it is because Woonhak has always known, without ever articulating, that Jaehyun is so very fragile. Which then made his endurance all the more noteworthy.
“I’d like a warning first if you’re going to drop me,” Jaehyun says, breaking through his thoughts, his voice playful but holding a hint of genuine worry.
Woonhak looks at him and it is not love or fondness for Jaehyun that strikes him. It is respect.
It’s not the kind of respect he can easily define. It is shapeless and nameless and he feels it inside his heart, not his mind. It’s the kind of respect he can only feel, and never express because in what words or actions could he even begin to describe it?
How can he say aloud, I respect you because you are so weak, so human?
Knowing Jaehyun, he’ll probably understand and restructure his sentences into something more profound and meaningful. But Woonhak doesn’t want to profess it, he wants to hold secret this perspective he’s gained, he wants to keep this side of Jaehyun only to himself.
“Never,” Woonhak replies with conviction and adjusts his hold on Jaehyun.
Jaehyun smiles gratefully, one of his dimples showing, and relaxes against him.
And it isn’t so much an instinct to protect that surfaces in Woonhak’s heart as it is an instinct to preserve. To preserve these facets of his hyung that he’s still learning, to preserve the strength and the fragility, the kindness and the rough edges, the tears and the smile.
He’ll strain under the weight of Jaehyun’s entire being for an eternity if he has to, as long as he achieves this goal. Figuratively and metaphorically. Because Woonhak’s cut of the same tenacious cloth as Jaehyun and if anyone can weather the treacherous storms Jaehyun wants to traverse all alone, it’s Woonhak.
For better or for better.
Woonhak has faith that his Jaehyunie hyung won’t ever let it get worse.