fast as you can
a/n: some of these are old fills from ficathons, some of these are from thekpop100, some of these are just fics i never got around to posting on here...all of these are not new.
gonna bite your feelings out
1,248w; pg (jonghyun/sinb, past!jonghyun/jessica)
oh, i'm sorry. i think i've mistaken you for someone else.
Sometimes Jonghyun sees her in clothes displays. Menus at coffee shops. Yeah, she would like the iced black coffee on a hot summer day - things like that. For a while, that becomes everything because she was his everything, once upon a time, before she proclaimed things are better this way with the kind of smile you gave a stranger you accidently bumped into and did her best to gently pry her fingers out of his desperate hold to keep whatever was left of them together. She was always better at letting go. She was always better at letting go.
Also for a while: he doesn't do anything but work, make music. Soojung, who doesn't go out of her way to see anyone outside of her members at all these days, even shakes him awake one day from where he's fallen asleep in the recording room and tells him to get his fucking act together.
When he asks her who's side she's on, she just says I'm fucking Switzerland.
It gets better eventually, sometime after that. Promotions, solo work, the satisfaction of knowing that someone's listening to him when the crowd screams in response to his lines. It gets better, it really does - he doesn't drink until he can't feel anymore, that stopped a long time ago, and he doesn't think about doing that either. Sure, he's a little thinner, but he can order iced black coffee at the coffee shop now without thinking about her, and it's fine, it's fine, honestly -
And then he sees her again.
It was great at first, but Eunbi's a little over it now.
"I wish people would just see me as me, you know?" she tells Eunha probably every other day. Eunha's probably as tired of it as she is by now, by relation. But she can't go to anyone else - they either tell her it's a good thing (Yuna and Yerin) or hug her and tell her it doesn't matter (Yewon) or let her rest her head on their shoulder and promise her that she's herself regardless and no one can take that away from her (Sojung). Truthfully, Eunbi doesn't need reassurance, she just wants to stop gritting her teeth every time someone tells her that she looks like Jessica Jung.
It's an honor - it really is, but then there's that sour taste in her mouth because she's Hwang Eunbi, not some untouchable girl group member whose name is heard more often in whispers than roars nowadays.
So it doesn’t make sense to her when one day she’s walking down the corridor with Eunha to get to standby and her shoulder bumps against someone else’s, but they’re already a little late so all she can do is apologize through her hair and keep moving until someone taps her shoulder from behind, footsteps in a hurry, and she turns around to meet wide eyes, alarmed.
Eunha tugs her into a bow. He’s a sunbae, registers briefly in Eunbi’s mind, and he looks at her like he knows her, but he also looks at her like she’s not standing in front of him, shaking her hair out of her face.
“Oh,” he smiles, more to himself than at them. She can feel Eunha going starstruck beside her. “I’m sorry. I think I’ve mistaken you for someone else.”
Her face burns. Someone’s calling to them to get on deck and Sojung’s walking towards them, confusion on her face, and it’s all chaos, really, backstage is chaos, but all Eunbi remembers about the first time she meets him is the tenderness in his eyes - like he was in love with her a long time ago - and for once, she wishes she was the girl everyone wanted her to be.
She’s young. Too young, he thinks when he sees her the next week, and the week after that. When she greets him with her group in the waiting room, she looks like she’s trying to figure him out and that’s how he remembers.
When you’re young, you think you can figure people out. That there’s something to figure out in the first place. But once you get older, you realize that the mask becomes a part of you, and even though you’re faking a smile sometimes, that’s still you.
There was a time when he thought Jessica was the one hiding. Wouldn’t hold his hand one day, wouldn’t let go of it the next. Tentative smile gracing her lips. But it was really him, hiding from the fact that she was ready to leave. He wasn’t ready to follow.
He still isn’t.
It turns into some weird kind of crush. First, Eunbi thinks about how they’d even managed - two extremely popular idols, without getting caught. Did they sneak out in cars with tinted windows, wearing sunglasses too large for their faces, hoods pulled low over their heads? Or was it something their PR team didn’t even know about - a doomed romance, or something along those lines?
But then, she starts thinking a lot about it in general. He saw her when he saw me, comes to mind often. It’s like one of those dramas, where the girl the main character loves dies tragically, and then another girl who looks like her shows up in his life. They fall in love, and the girl never knows that he used to love someone who looks exactly like her. Except Eunbi isn’t dumb, and Jessica isn’t dead, and Jonghyun isn’t in love with her.
She’s better than all this. But sometimes, Eunbi can’t help but think about how he looked at her with all that love and pain, like she was everything to him in that split second - she could practically hear the emotional belting of the drama anthem in her head, and how powerful that made her feel.
She looks like a schoolgirl in her white dress and clean sneakers - like one of those girls who yelled at you when you slacked off during cleaning duty. It almost makes him feel like he’s nineteen again. Nineteen, probably around the time he first met Jessica, who quickly corrected him when he tried to call her Sooyeon.
He knows that there are other men out there who would kill for something like this, her hands balled into fists at her sides. She looks at him for a long while, lips pressed together, and they just wait for someone to make the first move.
She’s still standing in the doorway, a good eight feet away from where he’s sitting. Some part of his stomach feels thoroughly sick.
Again, she takes him by surprise. It’s literally the kind of dialogue you’d find in a soap opera. “Do you think of her when you see me?”
Would you ever fall in love with me?
He smiles. It’s half-fake and half-sincere, but he feels a pang of guilt in his heart for whatever he managed to start. “You really do look similar to her, like they say.”
No.
Her hair swings behind her as she turns back into the hallway. She’s young, it reminds him. Too young, and the smile slides off his face. Nothing’s really changed, has it.
That night, she downloads several drama OSTs off of Yuna’s laptop. Not really her kind of music, even though she keeps her earbuds in at full volume after the lights go out.
Well, at least he looked like he loved her that one day.
glitter glitter glitter
404w; pg (ilhoon/wendy)
i reek of the other boys even though i haven't been kissed in weeks.
It's strange, the feeling of his lips approaching hers, blind through closed eyes, just waiting. Waiting. The crisp smell of fabric softener mixed with something kind of boyish, something Seulgi and Joohyun and Sooyoung never smell of.
"I'm not him," he says. Wendy blinks her eyes open and he's just sitting across from her again, like nothing ever happened or was going to happen between them. Him leaning back in his chair so the front two legs hover above the ground, her with the backs of her hands flat against the table like she left them in mid-speech. She frowns, wondering if everything leading up to this moment was a misinterpretation.
"I'm sorry?"
Ilhoon sticks his hands into his pockets with a shrug. Baseball jacket instead of leather. Lips that habitually hid things behind smiles. "I'm not him," he repeats, like it's a fact, and Wendy presses her lips together because it's not fair that Ilhoon does this to her sometimes - saying cryptic things like it's not a big deal, baiting her to figure him out. Because it's not like she doesn't want to, but it's because it's not easy when the last time she's been kissed like she wanted to was years ago in a whole different country, and it was so much easier then, why was it so hard now, Ilhoon -
A hand moves to cover one of her open palms. Lukewarm grasp, like a dead hand holding another dead hand. The front legs of his chair hit the linoleum, unsettling thud, kind of reminds her of his smiles. He gives her one of those now and she stares, and everything continues to not make sense.
"I'm not him, but I can kiss you if you want," he tells her this time, and it's like she still has her eyes closed. It's like she's never seen him for the first time after all this time, but his fingertips tap a rhythm against the lines of her palm, waiting like she's waiting, but in a different way.
Her fingers close over his. "Sure," she whispers and he moves in to swallow it. This time, his lips touch hers, and her eyes are open when it happens, and it's still strange, even when something's finally happening after all this time they've spent sitting across from each other, waiting. Ilhoon's strange, Wendy thinks.
She wonders if this was what she was waiting for.
there's greener grass
743w; g (wonpil/jr)
things always go unsaid between them.
Wonpil knows it's Jinyoung slinging his arm around his shoulder, yanking him over so his shoulder hits Jinyoung's armpit. The worst part about it all is that he doesn't smell Jinyoung's sweat until it's too late. He crinkles his nose, trying to wipe the smile that works its way to the corners of his mouth off his face to no avail.
"You said you wanted to see me?" Jinyoung coos, poking Wonpil's cheek. He groans, but he doesn't actually mind. It'd been so long since he last saw Jinyoung - was it in June? At 2PM's concert? - and sending each other messages during the wee hours of the morning in between practices wasn't quite the same as having the living, breathing, poking-his-face Jinyoung laughing over some stupid shit he did right next to him. "Guys!" he yells, facing the half-open practice room door where the rest of his members were, on break in between cleaning the choreography for their end-of-the-year performances. "Pil-ah missed me! Isn't that sweet - "
Wonpil puts his hand in Jinyoung's face. "Shut up," he says, trying to be gruff. Jinyoung snorts, doing his best to suppress the laughter bubbling behind his pressed-together lips. He's smiling down at Wonpil, Wonpil's head on his shoulder, and it makes something swell in his chest - some kind of happiness that keeps growing and makes him feel giddier by the second.
But then he sees the dark circles under Jinyoung's crinkling eyes, even darker under the hallway light they sit not too far from. Feels how hard Jinyoung's side is, pressed against his - more bones than anything else. Are you wasting away? Wonpil asked him sometime last year during one of the rare occasions Jinyoung had time to hang out. He was only half-joking then.
Jinyoung's face had hardened somewhat. You'll see, Pil-ah. And then he took another wonderfully-timed shot of soju.
He swallows. Even though Wonpil's debuted now, it's not the same as what Jinyoung does on a daily basis. Dancing and pretending as if your body doesn't feel like it's breaking apart, hitting the right note or else they say you're just a talentless face - pretty but hollowed out inside, smiling when you haven't shut your eyes for more than forty minutes at a time in two days, but at the same time, not willing to give up this life for anything else in the world. There was probably more to it, but Jinyoung never really talked about it, even to Wonpil when he had that cloudy, far away look in his eyes because then you're ungrateful.
Sometimes, Wonpil wondered if he was the lucky one. He got to play his synth, sing, perform music he loved in front of audiences that wanted to listen to him. Not like Jinyoung didn't have things like that. He always had to consciously supply himself the thought. Not like Jinyoung didn't have things like that - but then again, things were just different.
"Are you that touched to see me, Pil-ah?" Jinyoung teases, shaking Wonpil out of his thoughts. His voice is light, but there's this half-concerned, half-knowing look in Jinyoung's eyes. He thinks about bringing it up, why are you talking to me right now when you could be napping and taking care of yourself, but instead you take care of other people, and I wish I could make sure you ate and slept like you should, but that's not how this world works, is it?, but then that would ruin the moment, though Jinyoung once assured him that there existed no such thing in their friendship because they were always bickering over the dumbest things one minute and then laughing about it the next. I value honesty, but Wonpil looks up into Jinyoung's eyes again and there's a tacit maybe not tonight in them. He lets out the breath he didn't even know he was holding.
Wonpil just burrows his head further into Jinyoung's sweaty neck. It reminds him of when they were trainees, sticky and dripping from dance practice, and Wonpil would flop on top of Jinyoung, who always protested, saying he was heavy. "Yeah, you wish," he laughs. It sounds somewhat sad to his own ears, filled with a sudden nostalgia.
Jinyoung shakes his head, chin knocking into Wonpil's cheek. Pats Wonpil's head. "Nah," he says, quiet voice louder than the yelling that's spilling into the hallway through the half-open door across from them. "I know."
not broke, just broken-hearted
1,426w; pg-13 (jr/suzy)
just remember, you can always turn around and i'll be here.
At some point in her career, Suji became terrified of being objectified.
"You can't do anything about it, Suji," Jieun told her, offering her more tissues one night when Suji started feeling hyperaware of every gaze on her body. Jieun, who only got popular once she started singing about how much she loved oppa in three octave notes. "You'll get used to it," she offered, with the next tissue after Suji finished blowing her nose in the last one, but it didn't make her feel any better, like it was supposed to. Instead, Suji asked Jieun if she could use the bathroom and spent the next ten minutes staring at the toilet, feeling sick to her stomach.
All men wanted - no, expected - her to be something. She was their first love, and sometimes in the middle of the night, even more so after Min, Fei, and Jia left the dorm, she lied awake for hours, imagining how many of them imagined taking her virginity.
After a while, it got better. She could look men who were strangers straight in the eye and smile sweetly, thinking you do not control me, and I am not yours. It helped. She rolled on music show floors in impossibly tight pants somedays and short skirts on others and convinced herself that the music was drowning out her thoughts and fears. She stopped looking for the guys who would stare at her bare legs instead of her face when she was wearing shorts.
But sometimes, she still woke up in the middle of the night with it all flooding over her no matter how much she tried to stop it from doing so. Other times, she just didn't sleep at all.
Jinyoung was terrifying for reasons Suji didn't really understand.
Maybe it was because she was his first love. Well, maybe not his first first - he'd told her as much once they were twenty, playing truth or dare while experimenting with their newfound freedom to drink alcohol - but you know, something like that. Maybe it was because after he told her that, sleeping soundly on the floor of her bedroom even when the rest of the dorm was empty that night, Suji wondered what it would be like if Jinyoung was the one who took her virginity, and she was terrified for not being terrified of the idea.
Maybe it was because no matter how busy she got, and no matter how she almost always ended up forgetting to think about Jinyoung in between her schedules, he'd always greet her with his usual eye-crinkling smile and a high-five - it used to be a hug, but then one day, Min looked at them and mentioned you two better be careful, people might misunderstand and Suji was half-annoyed and half-surprised that Min bothered to care.
Jinyoung had smiled sheepishly. "How about a fist bump?" he suggested. Suji just rolled her eyes and pretended to slap him, which he deflected with his hand. High-five it was.
They weren't even that close anymore, and Suji was no longer a virgin, but sometimes her mind wandered and she'd end up thinking about that night, Jinyoung on the floor of her bedroom, and how she wondered what it'd be like if they had sex. That, for some reason, still terrified her.
So on one night when Suji feels the loneliness crushing her under its empty weight as she lies awake in bed, she calls Jinyoung. It didn't have to be Jinyoung - Jinyoung, who didn't scare her when he stared at her legs with his eyes wide when they were backstage at a JYP Nation concert, but scared her when he had told her we're best friends, Suji, don't you forget that - it could've been Jieun, or Jiyeon, or Soyeon, or even Soohyun. She only realizes this once he picks up to her silence and demands to know where she is and if he should bring her anything.
"Are you okay?" is the first thing he asks when she opens the door for him. He's not panting like he ran all the way here - because he wouldn't have, he would've taken a cab and used the elevator - but he looks at her, worried and caring and Suji thinks about how well they used to know each other and starts crying.
This time, Min's not there to warn them about people who might misunderstand, who might not get it - because let's face it, no one gets Suji - when Jinyoung hugs her and his heart is pressed against her heart, warm and alive and beating. Closes her eyes - you're okay, you're okay, you're okay, Suji, shh.
Repeats it to herself before she realizes it's Jinyoung telling her that.
"You know people care about you, Suji," Jinyoung says, thumb nail caught between his teeth, from where he's chewing it. All the lights in her apartment are still off, and they sit on her couch in the dark, but her tears have dried, leaving her heart pruny and small as a result. It beats painfully, like it cannot hold all the blood passing through it.
Suji looks up at him wordlessly, her head in his lap. Wonders how she should put the idea into words, the way she ignored - but knew and never forgot about - how men looked at her when she was only eighteen. "It's more complicated than that," she tries, staring at the shadow of her hand she holds above her face.
A mixture of concern, frustration, and resignation flickers in Jinyoung's eyes before melting into his usual soft gaze. He puts his thumb down. "Just remember, Suji, that I'm always behind you, okay? I'm here for you."
Suji lets her hand fall onto her stomach. Lets her eyes wander to the ceiling, the corner where one wall meets another, focusing and unfocusing her gaze, before looking back at Jinyoung. "Are you putting yourself down? One day, I won't be at the top anymore. You won't be behind me, then," she tries to joke without a smile. Suji's suddenly aware that she's lost whatever humor she used to have over the years.
Jinyoung indulges her with a laugh anyway, but his eyes are darker now, even in her dark apartment, as if she just reminded him about something he wanted to forget. It disappears just as quickly when he looks back at her. "I guess so," he sighs. "But just remember, okay, Suji?"
They're lying on her queen sized bed - too big for her, especially when she had a tendency to sleep curled into herself, but her parents insisted she treat herself - when Suji remembers. Jinyoung terrifies her. But her blood doesn't rush to her head when she turns her head to look at him, probably sleeping well for the first time in a while, and it makes her kind of glad that she ended up getting this mattress. Instead, her fingers tingle with excited energy when she reaches a hand over, hovering above the hair she wants to, but can't quite bring herself to, brush away from his face. His breath tickles her palm before she can do it, startling her to draw her arm back into herself.
What if you were my first love, she mouths, too scared that Jinyoung will catch her if she whispers. Thinks about sleepless nights, awake and terrified of how people made her into something she wasn't, and those few in between when she was awake and thinking about Jinyoung. The way he said it all those years ago - you know, I loved you, Bae Suji - and how she was so terrified then that her heart beat loud in her chest, so loud she swore he would hear it, but he never said anything about it. Him on her floor, sleeping, as she thought about Jinyoung taking her virginity. Having sex for the first time and not thinking about Jinyoung at all. Should she have thought about him then? How he always smiled at her in greeting, how his eyes were wide at the sight of her bare legs, how he looked at her from where she was looking up at him, head on his lap -
What if I was in love with you? Suji's about to add on more - But I'm not and I never was - and then it hits her, why she's terrified of Jinyoung -
Because he was her first love. And she is still in love with him.
so i won't lose myself
1,155w; pg (jb/jr)
there are some things jaebum only talks about with jinyoung.
The first time Jaebum says it is when they're eighteen. His hair is blond and he's kicking around furniture in their dorm at one in the morning and it wakes Jinyoung up from where he fell asleep on the couch in front of the TV. It's still on, casting ghostly glares over him and Jaebum.
Jaebum doesn't notice that Jinyoung's awake, or if he does, he doesn't care. In between spitting foul words, it comes out - I wish I was popular, then everything would be better, wouldn't have to perform in front of fuckers who don't even smile, they don't give a fucking shit, then I wouldn't have to take care of everything, of us, why can't I just have some peace and quiet these days, I'm so fucking tired of this - and Jinyoung can't find it in himself to interrupt him. Doesn't even want to correct him or say I can take care of myself just fine, thank you very much because it's not the truth. He and Jaebum hadn't even been that close before JJ Project and suddenly spending twenty-four hours, seven days a week together with little to no sleep flared up Jinyoung's moods, and it forced Jaebum to pound on locked doors demanding Jinyoung, please come out. Jinyoung in a half-exasperated, half-annoyed tone more often than not. Jinyoung knew he was the burden between them two - knew that Jaebum knew it, too, but never said it to Jinyoung's face - and even though he still wasn't now, not intentionally, at least, it still hits someplace close to Jinyoung's heart and makes him feel the pressure of tears threatening to leak out of his eyes.
So he just stares, unmoving, as Jaebum keeps destroying things. Hears him punch the wall near the tiny kitchen four times. Five times. Heavy breathing. Collapsing back down onto the ground.
Closes his eyes when Jaebum finally picks himself up again. The brightness of the TV screen behind his lids finally goes dark, the blanket that was slipping off his stomach gets tucked back beneath his chin. The place where Jaebum's fingers accidently graze his cheek tingles.
Only after he hears Jaebum's footsteps retreat into their small bedroom does Jinyoung let himself cry.
The next time he hears Jaebum say it, it's 2013. His hair is black now and he's tapping his fingers against this loose page in his script and it makes the most irritating noise ever, especially when Jinyoung's in the middle of trying to memorize his lines. He knows better now, to not snap at Jaebum about it, that Jaebum would rather be behind that camera than in front of it, so he just grits his teeth and bears with it. Jinyoung's been doing that a lot these days.
Jaebum sighs, wistfully. "I wish I was popular," he says, not looking at Jinyoung, or at his script, or at anything, really. This time, it encompasses the unsaid things between them that they'd been thinking about bringing up for months rather than anger.
Maybe if they'd succeeded more, if Jinyoung pushed himself more during those performances, if Jaebum was a little more charming, if they were both more handsome, more unique, just something more than they were, they wouldn't be training still. Maybe they'd be promoting their next single, trying their best to be entertaining on variety shows, heck, maybe even recording an album. Instead, they were sitting on a practice room floor, scripts that they didn't care much for in their hands, thinking of the could've been but never will be.
Jinyoung doesn't know what to say, if he even needs to say anything in response. All that comes to mind are the thoughts we weren't good enough, we failed, and the unreadable expression on Jaebum's face makes him nervous about going there.
In the end, he laughs humorlessly. "Yeah," he says. Jaebum's looking at him now. "Me too."
And they get each other.
Jaebum's crying the third time he says it. Youngjae comes to him as he's brushing his teeth, eyes closing, whining Jaebum hyung locked the door to our room and I wouldn't mind but my pajamas are in there and he won't let me in and it's been thirty minutes, help me, hyung so Jinyoung spits out his toothpaste, hands Youngjae a pair of his pajama pants, and knocks on the door to Jaebum's room.
Jaebum opens the door for him immediately and closes it as soon as Jinyoung's inside. He goes back to where he'd been sitting before, cross-legged, and pulls his headphones over his ears. The music's so loud that Jinyoung can hear the tiny voices and instruments from where he's sitting, all the way across the room from Jaebum.
He knows what Jaebum's thinking from the stormy look on his face, his eyes squeezed shut in an attempt to drown himself in the music he's listening to. Three promotions in one year, whatever fame they had as JJ Project tacked on, even the company name pushing them along and we're still not getting anywhere, why are we not getting anywhere, I'm not good enough, I'm not good enough, I'm not good enough. Jinyoung watches as Jaebum presses his lips together, swallowing before the sob escapes his throat and it's the most gut-wrenching sound Jinyoung's ever heard.
"Hey," he says softly, walking over and sitting next to Jaebum. "It's okay." Leans Jaebum's head against his shoulder. "It's okay."
Jaebum lets out another watery breath. Jinyoung can feel his tears leaking onto the sleeve of his shirt. He breathes again, shakily, collecting himself, before he says anything. Jinyoung waits, staring at the spot where Youngjae scraped his shoe on the wall.
"I wish we were," he swallows, and another watery breath surfaces, "popular, Jinyoung."
Jinyoung circles an arm around Jaebum's shoulders. Jaebum, who woke him up for school when he could barely keep his own eyes open, who made sure Jinyoung was right behind him when they were walking through huge crowds, who pounded on the other side of locked doors saying Jinyoung, please come out, Jinyoung when Jinyoung didn't want to deal with the world. The Jaebum that Jinyoung was nervous promoting with because why isn't it Wonpil, I don't know Jaebum. The Jaebum that smiles in place of getting angry now, that has more members than just Jinyoung to take care of, that doesn't take care of him that much anymore because he knows Jinyoung can take care of himself, that sometimes needs Jinyoung to take care of him instead because they've been through everything together and because he still doesn't think he's good enough, whatever he thinks that means.
Jinyoung doesn't know how to tell him that he is and that he's always been in words that Jaebum will believe, so he takes off Jaebum's headphones and lets him cry on his shoulder, saying a vague, "But we will be," in their place.
And he smiles at Jaebum.
die atomic
451w; g (dasom-centric)
dasom learns how to conquer the darkness.
5.
Dasom thinks things live in the darkness, waiting for her parents to turn off the lights before they stalk out of the shadows and stroke her freshly-combed hair, weaving nightmares out of the loose strands as her eyes close. The night pulses, as if alive.
14.
Dasom thinks too much in the darkness, eyes closed but mind open, rummaging through the whispers of her classmates as they glance in her direction, the ugliness of puberty rearing its head to look straight back at her. And in the reflection of its eyes, she thinks she sees herself, tiny and trembling, judging her mirror image.
19.
Dasom burns images into her eyes, computer screen catching blue on the paleness of her face that’s not pretty enough for the people hiding behind their usernames. Every last hate comment she sears into her heart, pretending it makes her stronger, like she should be, even when her unnies look at her like they believe otherwise.
20.
The safety of her vision behind closed eyelids, a momentary blink before she faces reality again. The look on some man she doesn’t care about’s face when she speaks honestly but insultingly. Her first acting gig. That split second of pitch dark is everything it used to be - the darkness alive, the darkness awake - and everything it is now - nights full of malicious comments, the moment before the lights hit her on the stage - and Dasom remembers to breathe, like her mother told her, to have the strength to fight away her fears.
23.
Dasom is still afraid of darkness. She buys herself cute nightlights whenever she and Hyolyn go shopping but forgets to replace them when they burn out. Leaves a trail of lights behind her when she passes through rooms to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night. Screams at haunted houses with Bora.
Sometimes she sees a shadow stretching out its fingers at her before the sun comes out, beckoning her back to when she was small, ready to cry at the slightest noise, and to when she was a teenager, afraid of growing into herself. But now, as she and her members take their places on stage with tingling fingertips, Dasom knows that without the darkness gripping her, crew making ripples in the pitch, her heart loud in her chest and eyes trying to catch any light they can find - without the fear of it swallowing her whole, leaving her with the words of people who didn’t like her burned into her vision and the people she loves hugging her close, telling her she’s worth the world - nothing can shine.
The music starts. That’s when the light hits her, and she smiles.
but only the violet souls
1,139w; pg-13 (sungjoo/wenhan)
sungjoo and wenhan talk, but don't really say anything.
warnings: dysfunctional relationship.
The first thing Sungjoo thinks when he thinks about Wenhan is his fist meeting the side of his face, the taste of blood when he licked the roof of his mouth, gravel scraping against his cheek. Thought he could get a punch or two in, hell, maybe even a kick, before it was over, and it already was. A ringing in his right ear, gentle at first, then more and more persistent, until it was all he could really hear.
But before that - the sound of Wenhan spitting out motherfucker.
At their school, there aren’t those kinds of guys or these kinds of girls: there are just students, all from similar backgrounds. Upper middle class, who come to school every day with clean, ironed uniforms and nice brand name shoes that three quarters of the student body all have identical pairs of. It’s easy to get lost in the sea of faces, to pass by somebody you know without noticing them until they call out your name at the last possible second, or not notice them at all.
It’s somehow easy for Sungjoo to spot Wenhan in the crowd, hallway flooded with too many bodies and unfamiliar faces that the familiar faces Sungjoo knows stick out to him like sore thumbs.
Wenhan wouldn’t call his name at the last possible second. They make eye contact. Neither of them looks away until they have to crane their necks to keep looking at each other, and that’s when the moment ends.
Wenhan has rough fingertips and palms. Sungjoo feels them sometimes when Wenhan pushes his hand into his face when he spaces out on him.
“What did I just say, Sungjoo?” he challenges. Yixuan laughs beside them on the odd days he eats with them instead of in the student council office. “What did I just say, Sungjoo?” he repeats again, tough resolve breaking with the smile that’s starting on his face.
“Fuck you!” Sungjoo laughs into his face as Wenhan pushes him onto the grass, slapping his cheeks with his palms - lighter than he expected. Sometimes Sungjoo wonders why Wenhan’s palms feel like sandpaper. Most times, he’s thinking about how to get Wenhan to tap out.
“So what’s after high school for you?”
Wenhan turns to look at him. Neighborhoods tinted orange from the sunset blur into one another outside the window behind his head. Wenhan’s recently cut his hair, so that the sides are shorter than before. He smells like the chlorine of the swimming pool, like the scent didn’t come off after showering the night before.
He tilts his head slightly, considering. Sungjoo waits. “Uni, I guess. Then a job. You know, the boring adult stuff. Responsibilities and all. Marriage, kids, maybe. Waking up one day when I’m fifty and wondering where my life went.”
Sungjoo hums in response. The late afternoon sunlight cards through Wenhan’s hair. “Sounds exciting.”
“Shut the fuck up.” There’s no bite to it, though.
There’s a bruise blooming on the side of his face when he looks in the mirror the next morning. A nasty, raw red, dark at the center. Tender to the touch.
Sungjoo thinks of Wenhan as he prods at it with his fingers. Wenhan and his perpetual chlorine smell mixed with detergent and sweat and soap, all rough hands and lit up eyes, gravel against the side of his face as he goes down, hears a watery breath like he’s crying and motherfucker, gone before Sungjoo can get up.
“Asshole,” Sungjoo whispers as he prods at it again, laughing even though it stings. The laughter sounds hollow in the bathroom, the acoustics too good. It amplifies the emptiness and the arbitrary tragedy of it all.
Yixuan tells him after class. “I told him to apologize. Has he?”
Sungjoo shrugs. “Obviously not.” The words come out small through gritted teeth. Sungjoo doesn’t feel as bitter as he sounds.
Yixuan waits as he collects his books. “You know,” he starts once Sungjoo’s got his messenger bag slung over his shoulder. “I wish you’d stop expecting things of him.”
“I’m not.” There’s a goddamn bruise on the side of his face, a most unpalatable shade of blue, and he still tastes the vicarious salt of his blood between his teeth every time his mind goes on default. A blur of eyes, the faint smell of chlorine everywhere now, then nothing at all.
Pushes his chair in. “I don’t.”
Wenhan pushes him against the fence. It shakes behind Sungjoo’s back, digs diamonds of rust onto the back of the white shirt of his uniform. Both their chins are up.
“So what are you gonna do?” Sungjoo taunts. Wenhan hits the fence beside his head, eyes not looking at him. It starts shaking violently again. His hair is still wet from the pool, water droplets dripping down the sides of his neck, chlorine smell everywhere. “What’re you gonna do, huh?”
Sandpaper fingertips against his cheeks, gentle enough to be carved into by rivers. Their teeth collide rather unpleasantly but his lips are soft, covering his own. For a breath, and then a breath more, shared between their hungry mouths, they stay like that, only their lips touching.
Unlike his hands, Wenhan's lips are soft.
“Hey.” Volume 7, 8, 9. Sungjoo keeps pressing the button.
“Hey.” One of the earbuds is ripped out of his ears. Slowly, Sungjoo turns to look at him. The same unreadable expression mirrors his own. Bruised cheek reflects an unmarred one, averted eyes and chins pointed into bodies on both sides. The sharp scent of chlorine is noticeably absent. Swimming season’s over, Sungjoo remembers belatedly. Swimming season’s over.
The lights signaling that the train is coming begin to flash. Wenhan puts Sungjoo’s earbud in his ear. “I like this song,” he says, after a moment of silence.
“Oh.” The train blurs to a stop before them. It lifts the strands of their hair, Wenhan’s longer than when Sungjoo saw him last. “Me too.”
There’s a tentative smile hanging on the corners of Wenhan’s mouth as they take their seats. Next to each other. “That’s nice,” he replies.
Sungjoo doesn’t think about the way Wenhan’s lips curve up, and about how unlike his hands, they are soft. About the way they breathed together, sandpaper fingertips ticklish against his cheek, about whether or not Wenhan will trace those fingertips against the bruise in full bloom on his face like the way he imagined in front of his bathroom mirror, laughing a hollow laugh. Sungjoo doesn’t think about any of it.
“Asshole.” There’s no bite to it, though. There isn’t anything but neighborhoods tinted orange blurring into one another and a thin cable between them in the otherwise empty train car. The only thing connecting them in this moment is a song they both don’t even like, coming to an end.
pools
781w; g (wonwoo/jun)
wonwoo was born in the midst of a typhoon.
Wonwoo was born in the midst of a typhoon, his right eye cloudy like the eye of the storm, his left eerily perceptive of his surroundings at landfall. In between the brief moment of a power outage and the lights coming back on, he was pushed out of his mother’s womb, and as she held him against her breast, the windows of the hospital shook with the fury of the wind, angered by how easily a life was ripped away from their clutches of disaster.
And when the night is dark, dark like that brief moment of power outage, Wonwoo closes his eye of the storm and clear left one and sinks into a shallow sleep, tossed around by the waves through his bedsheets, dreaming of the abyss of the ocean and two sharp eyes in it, staring back at him.
Joshua tells him when he’s sixteen that most hurricanes are named after women. Wonwoo thinks circles around the idea before coming up with this conclusion:
“Are you trying to say I should be a girl?”
Joshua’s quick to disagree, afraid of being misinterpreted. But he doesn’t offer any other reasoning behind the before stated, so Wonwoo thinks of something for him.
“Maybe typhoons are masculine.”
Maybe.
In the old days, people thought storms were dragons, their long, scaled bodies churning amongst the clouds, flooding their farmlands. But people in the old days also believed in despotism and chopping off heads for honorable death, so Wonwoo’s not so sure.
He’s also not so sure when he wakes up one day in the middle of the night to the sound of thunder and the insistent fist of the rain pounding against his window. Wonwoo is not supposed to be afraid of the storms, though he’d think they’d be afraid of him. When he walks to the bus stop the next day with his father’s old umbrella, there is someone soaked to the skin, sitting on the bench.
This someone only turns to look at him once his sloshing sneakers have stopped, the old umbrella between them. This someone looks at him with two sharp eyes - the abyss of the ocean and the ominous bone-feeders in the dearth of the darkness - and like in Wonwoo’s dreams, they stare back at him.
Contrary to his eyes and the pointed ends of his wet, long hair, the way Wen Junhui speaks is soft. He hums what vaguely sounds like the two beginning notes of a song Wonwoo has heard before instead of verbally agreeing. He asks, “and then?” unlike Joshua, who lets conversations lull into the silence that is the in-between of waves hitting the sand of the shore.
Maybe it is because Wen Junhui is Chinese, and an accent colors his words differently than everyone else’s. Maybe it is because he found Wen Junhui sitting at his bus stop one grey day in the onslaught of rain, letting it dance against his skin.
Maybe it is because he dreams of the abyss of the ocean, the marine snow ghosting against his cheeks, the water caressing its careful and never-ending fingers across his body - but in the place of where it should be holding his hand is someone else’s, Wen Junhui’s - soft like the way he speaks, and cutting through the midnight of the water are his eyes, sharp and staring back at him.
Storms are sensationalist. They swallow and wreck and throw it all back up and people, tiny and insignificant, are left to fit the pieces back together like a puzzle that’s too big and complex for them to figure out.
“Then what are we?” Junhui asks, far away, buoy in the distance of the tempest that is Wonwoo’s thoughts. The words come to him as if he’s underwater, holding his breath, watching things unfold before him like the rippling surface of chlorinated pool water separated him from everything real this whole time.
The eye of the storm blinks. Junhui is there, head above the water, his hand in Wonwoo’s trying to pull him up.
For once, Wonwoo feels his lungs burning.
Wonwoo was born in the midst of a typhoon and, for nineteen years, he let the storm born within him take him in the undertow - terrifyingly impassive to the surface.
Today, that typhoon spit him up. And Wen Junhui, as tiny and human and as insignificant in the face of fear as Wonwoo himself, pulled him out of the water, and they stared, with Wonwoo’s storm eye and Junhui’s sharp ones, at the ominous aftermath of all the years before.
We are awake, listening to the rain hit my father’s old umbrella between us. Waiting.
Waiting for the storm to end.
gonna bite your feelings out
1,248w; pg (jonghyun/sinb, past!jonghyun/jessica)
oh, i'm sorry. i think i've mistaken you for someone else.
Sometimes Jonghyun sees her in clothes displays. Menus at coffee shops. Yeah, she would like the iced black coffee on a hot summer day - things like that. For a while, that becomes everything because she was his everything, once upon a time, before she proclaimed things are better this way with the kind of smile you gave a stranger you accidently bumped into and did her best to gently pry her fingers out of his desperate hold to keep whatever was left of them together. She was always better at letting go. She was always better at letting go.
Also for a while: he doesn't do anything but work, make music. Soojung, who doesn't go out of her way to see anyone outside of her members at all these days, even shakes him awake one day from where he's fallen asleep in the recording room and tells him to get his fucking act together.
When he asks her who's side she's on, she just says I'm fucking Switzerland.
It gets better eventually, sometime after that. Promotions, solo work, the satisfaction of knowing that someone's listening to him when the crowd screams in response to his lines. It gets better, it really does - he doesn't drink until he can't feel anymore, that stopped a long time ago, and he doesn't think about doing that either. Sure, he's a little thinner, but he can order iced black coffee at the coffee shop now without thinking about her, and it's fine, it's fine, honestly -
And then he sees her again.
It was great at first, but Eunbi's a little over it now.
"I wish people would just see me as me, you know?" she tells Eunha probably every other day. Eunha's probably as tired of it as she is by now, by relation. But she can't go to anyone else - they either tell her it's a good thing (Yuna and Yerin) or hug her and tell her it doesn't matter (Yewon) or let her rest her head on their shoulder and promise her that she's herself regardless and no one can take that away from her (Sojung). Truthfully, Eunbi doesn't need reassurance, she just wants to stop gritting her teeth every time someone tells her that she looks like Jessica Jung.
It's an honor - it really is, but then there's that sour taste in her mouth because she's Hwang Eunbi, not some untouchable girl group member whose name is heard more often in whispers than roars nowadays.
So it doesn’t make sense to her when one day she’s walking down the corridor with Eunha to get to standby and her shoulder bumps against someone else’s, but they’re already a little late so all she can do is apologize through her hair and keep moving until someone taps her shoulder from behind, footsteps in a hurry, and she turns around to meet wide eyes, alarmed.
Eunha tugs her into a bow. He’s a sunbae, registers briefly in Eunbi’s mind, and he looks at her like he knows her, but he also looks at her like she’s not standing in front of him, shaking her hair out of her face.
“Oh,” he smiles, more to himself than at them. She can feel Eunha going starstruck beside her. “I’m sorry. I think I’ve mistaken you for someone else.”
Her face burns. Someone’s calling to them to get on deck and Sojung’s walking towards them, confusion on her face, and it’s all chaos, really, backstage is chaos, but all Eunbi remembers about the first time she meets him is the tenderness in his eyes - like he was in love with her a long time ago - and for once, she wishes she was the girl everyone wanted her to be.
She’s young. Too young, he thinks when he sees her the next week, and the week after that. When she greets him with her group in the waiting room, she looks like she’s trying to figure him out and that’s how he remembers.
When you’re young, you think you can figure people out. That there’s something to figure out in the first place. But once you get older, you realize that the mask becomes a part of you, and even though you’re faking a smile sometimes, that’s still you.
There was a time when he thought Jessica was the one hiding. Wouldn’t hold his hand one day, wouldn’t let go of it the next. Tentative smile gracing her lips. But it was really him, hiding from the fact that she was ready to leave. He wasn’t ready to follow.
He still isn’t.
It turns into some weird kind of crush. First, Eunbi thinks about how they’d even managed - two extremely popular idols, without getting caught. Did they sneak out in cars with tinted windows, wearing sunglasses too large for their faces, hoods pulled low over their heads? Or was it something their PR team didn’t even know about - a doomed romance, or something along those lines?
But then, she starts thinking a lot about it in general. He saw her when he saw me, comes to mind often. It’s like one of those dramas, where the girl the main character loves dies tragically, and then another girl who looks like her shows up in his life. They fall in love, and the girl never knows that he used to love someone who looks exactly like her. Except Eunbi isn’t dumb, and Jessica isn’t dead, and Jonghyun isn’t in love with her.
She’s better than all this. But sometimes, Eunbi can’t help but think about how he looked at her with all that love and pain, like she was everything to him in that split second - she could practically hear the emotional belting of the drama anthem in her head, and how powerful that made her feel.
She looks like a schoolgirl in her white dress and clean sneakers - like one of those girls who yelled at you when you slacked off during cleaning duty. It almost makes him feel like he’s nineteen again. Nineteen, probably around the time he first met Jessica, who quickly corrected him when he tried to call her Sooyeon.
He knows that there are other men out there who would kill for something like this, her hands balled into fists at her sides. She looks at him for a long while, lips pressed together, and they just wait for someone to make the first move.
She’s still standing in the doorway, a good eight feet away from where he’s sitting. Some part of his stomach feels thoroughly sick.
Again, she takes him by surprise. It’s literally the kind of dialogue you’d find in a soap opera. “Do you think of her when you see me?”
Would you ever fall in love with me?
He smiles. It’s half-fake and half-sincere, but he feels a pang of guilt in his heart for whatever he managed to start. “You really do look similar to her, like they say.”
No.
Her hair swings behind her as she turns back into the hallway. She’s young, it reminds him. Too young, and the smile slides off his face. Nothing’s really changed, has it.
That night, she downloads several drama OSTs off of Yuna’s laptop. Not really her kind of music, even though she keeps her earbuds in at full volume after the lights go out.
Well, at least he looked like he loved her that one day.
glitter glitter glitter
404w; pg (ilhoon/wendy)
i reek of the other boys even though i haven't been kissed in weeks.
It's strange, the feeling of his lips approaching hers, blind through closed eyes, just waiting. Waiting. The crisp smell of fabric softener mixed with something kind of boyish, something Seulgi and Joohyun and Sooyoung never smell of.
"I'm not him," he says. Wendy blinks her eyes open and he's just sitting across from her again, like nothing ever happened or was going to happen between them. Him leaning back in his chair so the front two legs hover above the ground, her with the backs of her hands flat against the table like she left them in mid-speech. She frowns, wondering if everything leading up to this moment was a misinterpretation.
"I'm sorry?"
Ilhoon sticks his hands into his pockets with a shrug. Baseball jacket instead of leather. Lips that habitually hid things behind smiles. "I'm not him," he repeats, like it's a fact, and Wendy presses her lips together because it's not fair that Ilhoon does this to her sometimes - saying cryptic things like it's not a big deal, baiting her to figure him out. Because it's not like she doesn't want to, but it's because it's not easy when the last time she's been kissed like she wanted to was years ago in a whole different country, and it was so much easier then, why was it so hard now, Ilhoon -
A hand moves to cover one of her open palms. Lukewarm grasp, like a dead hand holding another dead hand. The front legs of his chair hit the linoleum, unsettling thud, kind of reminds her of his smiles. He gives her one of those now and she stares, and everything continues to not make sense.
"I'm not him, but I can kiss you if you want," he tells her this time, and it's like she still has her eyes closed. It's like she's never seen him for the first time after all this time, but his fingertips tap a rhythm against the lines of her palm, waiting like she's waiting, but in a different way.
Her fingers close over his. "Sure," she whispers and he moves in to swallow it. This time, his lips touch hers, and her eyes are open when it happens, and it's still strange, even when something's finally happening after all this time they've spent sitting across from each other, waiting. Ilhoon's strange, Wendy thinks.
She wonders if this was what she was waiting for.
there's greener grass
743w; g (wonpil/jr)
things always go unsaid between them.
Wonpil knows it's Jinyoung slinging his arm around his shoulder, yanking him over so his shoulder hits Jinyoung's armpit. The worst part about it all is that he doesn't smell Jinyoung's sweat until it's too late. He crinkles his nose, trying to wipe the smile that works its way to the corners of his mouth off his face to no avail.
"You said you wanted to see me?" Jinyoung coos, poking Wonpil's cheek. He groans, but he doesn't actually mind. It'd been so long since he last saw Jinyoung - was it in June? At 2PM's concert? - and sending each other messages during the wee hours of the morning in between practices wasn't quite the same as having the living, breathing, poking-his-face Jinyoung laughing over some stupid shit he did right next to him. "Guys!" he yells, facing the half-open practice room door where the rest of his members were, on break in between cleaning the choreography for their end-of-the-year performances. "Pil-ah missed me! Isn't that sweet - "
Wonpil puts his hand in Jinyoung's face. "Shut up," he says, trying to be gruff. Jinyoung snorts, doing his best to suppress the laughter bubbling behind his pressed-together lips. He's smiling down at Wonpil, Wonpil's head on his shoulder, and it makes something swell in his chest - some kind of happiness that keeps growing and makes him feel giddier by the second.
But then he sees the dark circles under Jinyoung's crinkling eyes, even darker under the hallway light they sit not too far from. Feels how hard Jinyoung's side is, pressed against his - more bones than anything else. Are you wasting away? Wonpil asked him sometime last year during one of the rare occasions Jinyoung had time to hang out. He was only half-joking then.
Jinyoung's face had hardened somewhat. You'll see, Pil-ah. And then he took another wonderfully-timed shot of soju.
He swallows. Even though Wonpil's debuted now, it's not the same as what Jinyoung does on a daily basis. Dancing and pretending as if your body doesn't feel like it's breaking apart, hitting the right note or else they say you're just a talentless face - pretty but hollowed out inside, smiling when you haven't shut your eyes for more than forty minutes at a time in two days, but at the same time, not willing to give up this life for anything else in the world. There was probably more to it, but Jinyoung never really talked about it, even to Wonpil when he had that cloudy, far away look in his eyes because then you're ungrateful.
Sometimes, Wonpil wondered if he was the lucky one. He got to play his synth, sing, perform music he loved in front of audiences that wanted to listen to him. Not like Jinyoung didn't have things like that. He always had to consciously supply himself the thought. Not like Jinyoung didn't have things like that - but then again, things were just different.
"Are you that touched to see me, Pil-ah?" Jinyoung teases, shaking Wonpil out of his thoughts. His voice is light, but there's this half-concerned, half-knowing look in Jinyoung's eyes. He thinks about bringing it up, why are you talking to me right now when you could be napping and taking care of yourself, but instead you take care of other people, and I wish I could make sure you ate and slept like you should, but that's not how this world works, is it?, but then that would ruin the moment, though Jinyoung once assured him that there existed no such thing in their friendship because they were always bickering over the dumbest things one minute and then laughing about it the next. I value honesty, but Wonpil looks up into Jinyoung's eyes again and there's a tacit maybe not tonight in them. He lets out the breath he didn't even know he was holding.
Wonpil just burrows his head further into Jinyoung's sweaty neck. It reminds him of when they were trainees, sticky and dripping from dance practice, and Wonpil would flop on top of Jinyoung, who always protested, saying he was heavy. "Yeah, you wish," he laughs. It sounds somewhat sad to his own ears, filled with a sudden nostalgia.
Jinyoung shakes his head, chin knocking into Wonpil's cheek. Pats Wonpil's head. "Nah," he says, quiet voice louder than the yelling that's spilling into the hallway through the half-open door across from them. "I know."
not broke, just broken-hearted
1,426w; pg-13 (jr/suzy)
just remember, you can always turn around and i'll be here.
At some point in her career, Suji became terrified of being objectified.
"You can't do anything about it, Suji," Jieun told her, offering her more tissues one night when Suji started feeling hyperaware of every gaze on her body. Jieun, who only got popular once she started singing about how much she loved oppa in three octave notes. "You'll get used to it," she offered, with the next tissue after Suji finished blowing her nose in the last one, but it didn't make her feel any better, like it was supposed to. Instead, Suji asked Jieun if she could use the bathroom and spent the next ten minutes staring at the toilet, feeling sick to her stomach.
All men wanted - no, expected - her to be something. She was their first love, and sometimes in the middle of the night, even more so after Min, Fei, and Jia left the dorm, she lied awake for hours, imagining how many of them imagined taking her virginity.
After a while, it got better. She could look men who were strangers straight in the eye and smile sweetly, thinking you do not control me, and I am not yours. It helped. She rolled on music show floors in impossibly tight pants somedays and short skirts on others and convinced herself that the music was drowning out her thoughts and fears. She stopped looking for the guys who would stare at her bare legs instead of her face when she was wearing shorts.
But sometimes, she still woke up in the middle of the night with it all flooding over her no matter how much she tried to stop it from doing so. Other times, she just didn't sleep at all.
Jinyoung was terrifying for reasons Suji didn't really understand.
Maybe it was because she was his first love. Well, maybe not his first first - he'd told her as much once they were twenty, playing truth or dare while experimenting with their newfound freedom to drink alcohol - but you know, something like that. Maybe it was because after he told her that, sleeping soundly on the floor of her bedroom even when the rest of the dorm was empty that night, Suji wondered what it would be like if Jinyoung was the one who took her virginity, and she was terrified for not being terrified of the idea.
Maybe it was because no matter how busy she got, and no matter how she almost always ended up forgetting to think about Jinyoung in between her schedules, he'd always greet her with his usual eye-crinkling smile and a high-five - it used to be a hug, but then one day, Min looked at them and mentioned you two better be careful, people might misunderstand and Suji was half-annoyed and half-surprised that Min bothered to care.
Jinyoung had smiled sheepishly. "How about a fist bump?" he suggested. Suji just rolled her eyes and pretended to slap him, which he deflected with his hand. High-five it was.
They weren't even that close anymore, and Suji was no longer a virgin, but sometimes her mind wandered and she'd end up thinking about that night, Jinyoung on the floor of her bedroom, and how she wondered what it'd be like if they had sex. That, for some reason, still terrified her.
So on one night when Suji feels the loneliness crushing her under its empty weight as she lies awake in bed, she calls Jinyoung. It didn't have to be Jinyoung - Jinyoung, who didn't scare her when he stared at her legs with his eyes wide when they were backstage at a JYP Nation concert, but scared her when he had told her we're best friends, Suji, don't you forget that - it could've been Jieun, or Jiyeon, or Soyeon, or even Soohyun. She only realizes this once he picks up to her silence and demands to know where she is and if he should bring her anything.
"Are you okay?" is the first thing he asks when she opens the door for him. He's not panting like he ran all the way here - because he wouldn't have, he would've taken a cab and used the elevator - but he looks at her, worried and caring and Suji thinks about how well they used to know each other and starts crying.
This time, Min's not there to warn them about people who might misunderstand, who might not get it - because let's face it, no one gets Suji - when Jinyoung hugs her and his heart is pressed against her heart, warm and alive and beating. Closes her eyes - you're okay, you're okay, you're okay, Suji, shh.
Repeats it to herself before she realizes it's Jinyoung telling her that.
"You know people care about you, Suji," Jinyoung says, thumb nail caught between his teeth, from where he's chewing it. All the lights in her apartment are still off, and they sit on her couch in the dark, but her tears have dried, leaving her heart pruny and small as a result. It beats painfully, like it cannot hold all the blood passing through it.
Suji looks up at him wordlessly, her head in his lap. Wonders how she should put the idea into words, the way she ignored - but knew and never forgot about - how men looked at her when she was only eighteen. "It's more complicated than that," she tries, staring at the shadow of her hand she holds above her face.
A mixture of concern, frustration, and resignation flickers in Jinyoung's eyes before melting into his usual soft gaze. He puts his thumb down. "Just remember, Suji, that I'm always behind you, okay? I'm here for you."
Suji lets her hand fall onto her stomach. Lets her eyes wander to the ceiling, the corner where one wall meets another, focusing and unfocusing her gaze, before looking back at Jinyoung. "Are you putting yourself down? One day, I won't be at the top anymore. You won't be behind me, then," she tries to joke without a smile. Suji's suddenly aware that she's lost whatever humor she used to have over the years.
Jinyoung indulges her with a laugh anyway, but his eyes are darker now, even in her dark apartment, as if she just reminded him about something he wanted to forget. It disappears just as quickly when he looks back at her. "I guess so," he sighs. "But just remember, okay, Suji?"
They're lying on her queen sized bed - too big for her, especially when she had a tendency to sleep curled into herself, but her parents insisted she treat herself - when Suji remembers. Jinyoung terrifies her. But her blood doesn't rush to her head when she turns her head to look at him, probably sleeping well for the first time in a while, and it makes her kind of glad that she ended up getting this mattress. Instead, her fingers tingle with excited energy when she reaches a hand over, hovering above the hair she wants to, but can't quite bring herself to, brush away from his face. His breath tickles her palm before she can do it, startling her to draw her arm back into herself.
What if you were my first love, she mouths, too scared that Jinyoung will catch her if she whispers. Thinks about sleepless nights, awake and terrified of how people made her into something she wasn't, and those few in between when she was awake and thinking about Jinyoung. The way he said it all those years ago - you know, I loved you, Bae Suji - and how she was so terrified then that her heart beat loud in her chest, so loud she swore he would hear it, but he never said anything about it. Him on her floor, sleeping, as she thought about Jinyoung taking her virginity. Having sex for the first time and not thinking about Jinyoung at all. Should she have thought about him then? How he always smiled at her in greeting, how his eyes were wide at the sight of her bare legs, how he looked at her from where she was looking up at him, head on his lap -
What if I was in love with you? Suji's about to add on more - But I'm not and I never was - and then it hits her, why she's terrified of Jinyoung -
Because he was her first love. And she is still in love with him.
so i won't lose myself
1,155w; pg (jb/jr)
there are some things jaebum only talks about with jinyoung.
The first time Jaebum says it is when they're eighteen. His hair is blond and he's kicking around furniture in their dorm at one in the morning and it wakes Jinyoung up from where he fell asleep on the couch in front of the TV. It's still on, casting ghostly glares over him and Jaebum.
Jaebum doesn't notice that Jinyoung's awake, or if he does, he doesn't care. In between spitting foul words, it comes out - I wish I was popular, then everything would be better, wouldn't have to perform in front of fuckers who don't even smile, they don't give a fucking shit, then I wouldn't have to take care of everything, of us, why can't I just have some peace and quiet these days, I'm so fucking tired of this - and Jinyoung can't find it in himself to interrupt him. Doesn't even want to correct him or say I can take care of myself just fine, thank you very much because it's not the truth. He and Jaebum hadn't even been that close before JJ Project and suddenly spending twenty-four hours, seven days a week together with little to no sleep flared up Jinyoung's moods, and it forced Jaebum to pound on locked doors demanding Jinyoung, please come out. Jinyoung in a half-exasperated, half-annoyed tone more often than not. Jinyoung knew he was the burden between them two - knew that Jaebum knew it, too, but never said it to Jinyoung's face - and even though he still wasn't now, not intentionally, at least, it still hits someplace close to Jinyoung's heart and makes him feel the pressure of tears threatening to leak out of his eyes.
So he just stares, unmoving, as Jaebum keeps destroying things. Hears him punch the wall near the tiny kitchen four times. Five times. Heavy breathing. Collapsing back down onto the ground.
Closes his eyes when Jaebum finally picks himself up again. The brightness of the TV screen behind his lids finally goes dark, the blanket that was slipping off his stomach gets tucked back beneath his chin. The place where Jaebum's fingers accidently graze his cheek tingles.
Only after he hears Jaebum's footsteps retreat into their small bedroom does Jinyoung let himself cry.
The next time he hears Jaebum say it, it's 2013. His hair is black now and he's tapping his fingers against this loose page in his script and it makes the most irritating noise ever, especially when Jinyoung's in the middle of trying to memorize his lines. He knows better now, to not snap at Jaebum about it, that Jaebum would rather be behind that camera than in front of it, so he just grits his teeth and bears with it. Jinyoung's been doing that a lot these days.
Jaebum sighs, wistfully. "I wish I was popular," he says, not looking at Jinyoung, or at his script, or at anything, really. This time, it encompasses the unsaid things between them that they'd been thinking about bringing up for months rather than anger.
Maybe if they'd succeeded more, if Jinyoung pushed himself more during those performances, if Jaebum was a little more charming, if they were both more handsome, more unique, just something more than they were, they wouldn't be training still. Maybe they'd be promoting their next single, trying their best to be entertaining on variety shows, heck, maybe even recording an album. Instead, they were sitting on a practice room floor, scripts that they didn't care much for in their hands, thinking of the could've been but never will be.
Jinyoung doesn't know what to say, if he even needs to say anything in response. All that comes to mind are the thoughts we weren't good enough, we failed, and the unreadable expression on Jaebum's face makes him nervous about going there.
In the end, he laughs humorlessly. "Yeah," he says. Jaebum's looking at him now. "Me too."
And they get each other.
Jaebum's crying the third time he says it. Youngjae comes to him as he's brushing his teeth, eyes closing, whining Jaebum hyung locked the door to our room and I wouldn't mind but my pajamas are in there and he won't let me in and it's been thirty minutes, help me, hyung so Jinyoung spits out his toothpaste, hands Youngjae a pair of his pajama pants, and knocks on the door to Jaebum's room.
Jaebum opens the door for him immediately and closes it as soon as Jinyoung's inside. He goes back to where he'd been sitting before, cross-legged, and pulls his headphones over his ears. The music's so loud that Jinyoung can hear the tiny voices and instruments from where he's sitting, all the way across the room from Jaebum.
He knows what Jaebum's thinking from the stormy look on his face, his eyes squeezed shut in an attempt to drown himself in the music he's listening to. Three promotions in one year, whatever fame they had as JJ Project tacked on, even the company name pushing them along and we're still not getting anywhere, why are we not getting anywhere, I'm not good enough, I'm not good enough, I'm not good enough. Jinyoung watches as Jaebum presses his lips together, swallowing before the sob escapes his throat and it's the most gut-wrenching sound Jinyoung's ever heard.
"Hey," he says softly, walking over and sitting next to Jaebum. "It's okay." Leans Jaebum's head against his shoulder. "It's okay."
Jaebum lets out another watery breath. Jinyoung can feel his tears leaking onto the sleeve of his shirt. He breathes again, shakily, collecting himself, before he says anything. Jinyoung waits, staring at the spot where Youngjae scraped his shoe on the wall.
"I wish we were," he swallows, and another watery breath surfaces, "popular, Jinyoung."
Jinyoung circles an arm around Jaebum's shoulders. Jaebum, who woke him up for school when he could barely keep his own eyes open, who made sure Jinyoung was right behind him when they were walking through huge crowds, who pounded on the other side of locked doors saying Jinyoung, please come out, Jinyoung when Jinyoung didn't want to deal with the world. The Jaebum that Jinyoung was nervous promoting with because why isn't it Wonpil, I don't know Jaebum. The Jaebum that smiles in place of getting angry now, that has more members than just Jinyoung to take care of, that doesn't take care of him that much anymore because he knows Jinyoung can take care of himself, that sometimes needs Jinyoung to take care of him instead because they've been through everything together and because he still doesn't think he's good enough, whatever he thinks that means.
Jinyoung doesn't know how to tell him that he is and that he's always been in words that Jaebum will believe, so he takes off Jaebum's headphones and lets him cry on his shoulder, saying a vague, "But we will be," in their place.
And he smiles at Jaebum.
die atomic
451w; g (dasom-centric)
dasom learns how to conquer the darkness.
5.
Dasom thinks things live in the darkness, waiting for her parents to turn off the lights before they stalk out of the shadows and stroke her freshly-combed hair, weaving nightmares out of the loose strands as her eyes close. The night pulses, as if alive.
14.
Dasom thinks too much in the darkness, eyes closed but mind open, rummaging through the whispers of her classmates as they glance in her direction, the ugliness of puberty rearing its head to look straight back at her. And in the reflection of its eyes, she thinks she sees herself, tiny and trembling, judging her mirror image.
19.
Dasom burns images into her eyes, computer screen catching blue on the paleness of her face that’s not pretty enough for the people hiding behind their usernames. Every last hate comment she sears into her heart, pretending it makes her stronger, like she should be, even when her unnies look at her like they believe otherwise.
20.
The safety of her vision behind closed eyelids, a momentary blink before she faces reality again. The look on some man she doesn’t care about’s face when she speaks honestly but insultingly. Her first acting gig. That split second of pitch dark is everything it used to be - the darkness alive, the darkness awake - and everything it is now - nights full of malicious comments, the moment before the lights hit her on the stage - and Dasom remembers to breathe, like her mother told her, to have the strength to fight away her fears.
23.
Dasom is still afraid of darkness. She buys herself cute nightlights whenever she and Hyolyn go shopping but forgets to replace them when they burn out. Leaves a trail of lights behind her when she passes through rooms to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night. Screams at haunted houses with Bora.
Sometimes she sees a shadow stretching out its fingers at her before the sun comes out, beckoning her back to when she was small, ready to cry at the slightest noise, and to when she was a teenager, afraid of growing into herself. But now, as she and her members take their places on stage with tingling fingertips, Dasom knows that without the darkness gripping her, crew making ripples in the pitch, her heart loud in her chest and eyes trying to catch any light they can find - without the fear of it swallowing her whole, leaving her with the words of people who didn’t like her burned into her vision and the people she loves hugging her close, telling her she’s worth the world - nothing can shine.
The music starts. That’s when the light hits her, and she smiles.
but only the violet souls
1,139w; pg-13 (sungjoo/wenhan)
sungjoo and wenhan talk, but don't really say anything.
warnings: dysfunctional relationship.
The first thing Sungjoo thinks when he thinks about Wenhan is his fist meeting the side of his face, the taste of blood when he licked the roof of his mouth, gravel scraping against his cheek. Thought he could get a punch or two in, hell, maybe even a kick, before it was over, and it already was. A ringing in his right ear, gentle at first, then more and more persistent, until it was all he could really hear.
But before that - the sound of Wenhan spitting out motherfucker.
At their school, there aren’t those kinds of guys or these kinds of girls: there are just students, all from similar backgrounds. Upper middle class, who come to school every day with clean, ironed uniforms and nice brand name shoes that three quarters of the student body all have identical pairs of. It’s easy to get lost in the sea of faces, to pass by somebody you know without noticing them until they call out your name at the last possible second, or not notice them at all.
It’s somehow easy for Sungjoo to spot Wenhan in the crowd, hallway flooded with too many bodies and unfamiliar faces that the familiar faces Sungjoo knows stick out to him like sore thumbs.
Wenhan wouldn’t call his name at the last possible second. They make eye contact. Neither of them looks away until they have to crane their necks to keep looking at each other, and that’s when the moment ends.
Wenhan has rough fingertips and palms. Sungjoo feels them sometimes when Wenhan pushes his hand into his face when he spaces out on him.
“What did I just say, Sungjoo?” he challenges. Yixuan laughs beside them on the odd days he eats with them instead of in the student council office. “What did I just say, Sungjoo?” he repeats again, tough resolve breaking with the smile that’s starting on his face.
“Fuck you!” Sungjoo laughs into his face as Wenhan pushes him onto the grass, slapping his cheeks with his palms - lighter than he expected. Sometimes Sungjoo wonders why Wenhan’s palms feel like sandpaper. Most times, he’s thinking about how to get Wenhan to tap out.
“So what’s after high school for you?”
Wenhan turns to look at him. Neighborhoods tinted orange from the sunset blur into one another outside the window behind his head. Wenhan’s recently cut his hair, so that the sides are shorter than before. He smells like the chlorine of the swimming pool, like the scent didn’t come off after showering the night before.
He tilts his head slightly, considering. Sungjoo waits. “Uni, I guess. Then a job. You know, the boring adult stuff. Responsibilities and all. Marriage, kids, maybe. Waking up one day when I’m fifty and wondering where my life went.”
Sungjoo hums in response. The late afternoon sunlight cards through Wenhan’s hair. “Sounds exciting.”
“Shut the fuck up.” There’s no bite to it, though.
There’s a bruise blooming on the side of his face when he looks in the mirror the next morning. A nasty, raw red, dark at the center. Tender to the touch.
Sungjoo thinks of Wenhan as he prods at it with his fingers. Wenhan and his perpetual chlorine smell mixed with detergent and sweat and soap, all rough hands and lit up eyes, gravel against the side of his face as he goes down, hears a watery breath like he’s crying and motherfucker, gone before Sungjoo can get up.
“Asshole,” Sungjoo whispers as he prods at it again, laughing even though it stings. The laughter sounds hollow in the bathroom, the acoustics too good. It amplifies the emptiness and the arbitrary tragedy of it all.
Yixuan tells him after class. “I told him to apologize. Has he?”
Sungjoo shrugs. “Obviously not.” The words come out small through gritted teeth. Sungjoo doesn’t feel as bitter as he sounds.
Yixuan waits as he collects his books. “You know,” he starts once Sungjoo’s got his messenger bag slung over his shoulder. “I wish you’d stop expecting things of him.”
“I’m not.” There’s a goddamn bruise on the side of his face, a most unpalatable shade of blue, and he still tastes the vicarious salt of his blood between his teeth every time his mind goes on default. A blur of eyes, the faint smell of chlorine everywhere now, then nothing at all.
Pushes his chair in. “I don’t.”
Wenhan pushes him against the fence. It shakes behind Sungjoo’s back, digs diamonds of rust onto the back of the white shirt of his uniform. Both their chins are up.
“So what are you gonna do?” Sungjoo taunts. Wenhan hits the fence beside his head, eyes not looking at him. It starts shaking violently again. His hair is still wet from the pool, water droplets dripping down the sides of his neck, chlorine smell everywhere. “What’re you gonna do, huh?”
Sandpaper fingertips against his cheeks, gentle enough to be carved into by rivers. Their teeth collide rather unpleasantly but his lips are soft, covering his own. For a breath, and then a breath more, shared between their hungry mouths, they stay like that, only their lips touching.
Unlike his hands, Wenhan's lips are soft.
“Hey.” Volume 7, 8, 9. Sungjoo keeps pressing the button.
“Hey.” One of the earbuds is ripped out of his ears. Slowly, Sungjoo turns to look at him. The same unreadable expression mirrors his own. Bruised cheek reflects an unmarred one, averted eyes and chins pointed into bodies on both sides. The sharp scent of chlorine is noticeably absent. Swimming season’s over, Sungjoo remembers belatedly. Swimming season’s over.
The lights signaling that the train is coming begin to flash. Wenhan puts Sungjoo’s earbud in his ear. “I like this song,” he says, after a moment of silence.
“Oh.” The train blurs to a stop before them. It lifts the strands of their hair, Wenhan’s longer than when Sungjoo saw him last. “Me too.”
There’s a tentative smile hanging on the corners of Wenhan’s mouth as they take their seats. Next to each other. “That’s nice,” he replies.
Sungjoo doesn’t think about the way Wenhan’s lips curve up, and about how unlike his hands, they are soft. About the way they breathed together, sandpaper fingertips ticklish against his cheek, about whether or not Wenhan will trace those fingertips against the bruise in full bloom on his face like the way he imagined in front of his bathroom mirror, laughing a hollow laugh. Sungjoo doesn’t think about any of it.
“Asshole.” There’s no bite to it, though. There isn’t anything but neighborhoods tinted orange blurring into one another and a thin cable between them in the otherwise empty train car. The only thing connecting them in this moment is a song they both don’t even like, coming to an end.
pools
781w; g (wonwoo/jun)
wonwoo was born in the midst of a typhoon.
Wonwoo was born in the midst of a typhoon, his right eye cloudy like the eye of the storm, his left eerily perceptive of his surroundings at landfall. In between the brief moment of a power outage and the lights coming back on, he was pushed out of his mother’s womb, and as she held him against her breast, the windows of the hospital shook with the fury of the wind, angered by how easily a life was ripped away from their clutches of disaster.
And when the night is dark, dark like that brief moment of power outage, Wonwoo closes his eye of the storm and clear left one and sinks into a shallow sleep, tossed around by the waves through his bedsheets, dreaming of the abyss of the ocean and two sharp eyes in it, staring back at him.
Joshua tells him when he’s sixteen that most hurricanes are named after women. Wonwoo thinks circles around the idea before coming up with this conclusion:
“Are you trying to say I should be a girl?”
Joshua’s quick to disagree, afraid of being misinterpreted. But he doesn’t offer any other reasoning behind the before stated, so Wonwoo thinks of something for him.
“Maybe typhoons are masculine.”
Maybe.
In the old days, people thought storms were dragons, their long, scaled bodies churning amongst the clouds, flooding their farmlands. But people in the old days also believed in despotism and chopping off heads for honorable death, so Wonwoo’s not so sure.
He’s also not so sure when he wakes up one day in the middle of the night to the sound of thunder and the insistent fist of the rain pounding against his window. Wonwoo is not supposed to be afraid of the storms, though he’d think they’d be afraid of him. When he walks to the bus stop the next day with his father’s old umbrella, there is someone soaked to the skin, sitting on the bench.
This someone only turns to look at him once his sloshing sneakers have stopped, the old umbrella between them. This someone looks at him with two sharp eyes - the abyss of the ocean and the ominous bone-feeders in the dearth of the darkness - and like in Wonwoo’s dreams, they stare back at him.
Contrary to his eyes and the pointed ends of his wet, long hair, the way Wen Junhui speaks is soft. He hums what vaguely sounds like the two beginning notes of a song Wonwoo has heard before instead of verbally agreeing. He asks, “and then?” unlike Joshua, who lets conversations lull into the silence that is the in-between of waves hitting the sand of the shore.
Maybe it is because Wen Junhui is Chinese, and an accent colors his words differently than everyone else’s. Maybe it is because he found Wen Junhui sitting at his bus stop one grey day in the onslaught of rain, letting it dance against his skin.
Maybe it is because he dreams of the abyss of the ocean, the marine snow ghosting against his cheeks, the water caressing its careful and never-ending fingers across his body - but in the place of where it should be holding his hand is someone else’s, Wen Junhui’s - soft like the way he speaks, and cutting through the midnight of the water are his eyes, sharp and staring back at him.
Storms are sensationalist. They swallow and wreck and throw it all back up and people, tiny and insignificant, are left to fit the pieces back together like a puzzle that’s too big and complex for them to figure out.
“Then what are we?” Junhui asks, far away, buoy in the distance of the tempest that is Wonwoo’s thoughts. The words come to him as if he’s underwater, holding his breath, watching things unfold before him like the rippling surface of chlorinated pool water separated him from everything real this whole time.
The eye of the storm blinks. Junhui is there, head above the water, his hand in Wonwoo’s trying to pull him up.
For once, Wonwoo feels his lungs burning.
Wonwoo was born in the midst of a typhoon and, for nineteen years, he let the storm born within him take him in the undertow - terrifyingly impassive to the surface.
Today, that typhoon spit him up. And Wen Junhui, as tiny and human and as insignificant in the face of fear as Wonwoo himself, pulled him out of the water, and they stared, with Wonwoo’s storm eye and Junhui’s sharp ones, at the ominous aftermath of all the years before.
We are awake, listening to the rain hit my father’s old umbrella between us. Waiting.
Waiting for the storm to end.