IMB 2012: Seraphic (1/2)
Title: Seraphic (1/2)
Pairing/Focus: Woohyun/Sunggyu
Rating: pg
Summary: Sunggyu finds out the hard way that hitting an angel with your bicycle isn’t good luck.
Final word count: ~13000
It’s four twenty seven on a shitty summer’s day when it happens.
“And Kim Sunggyu?” the teacher says after handing out everyone’s math tests. “You’ll need to stay behind after school and see me.” The fact that she says it loudly in front of the whole class with that smirk teachers have when they think things are funny makes him want to slap her across the face.
Snickers erupt through the class as his peers sneak less-than-subtle glances in his direction, and he has nowhere to look but at the less than satisfactory mark branding his paper. “Yes teacher,” he murmurs in reply, making sure to avoid all eye contact with his classmates as he shoves the paper in the back of his textbook.
After thirty minutes of getting an earful from a batty old woman, he’s finally able to trudge to bike racks and head home. It’s been pretty much the worst day he’s had in a while: from being made fun of by his math teacher in first class, getting pounded by another class in softball to forgetting his wallet and subsequently having no lunch, Sunggyu reckons that there’s nothing that could make the day worse.
Which is a pretty logical assumption, because not many people think that they’ll run someone over with a bicycle.
A yell of some sort escapes his lips, his hands and knees grazed and stinging from the asphalt path. His sight is the last sense to return, and he almost has a heart attack when he sees a boy collapsed under his bicycle, his arm askew and seeping blood from an open graze. “Oh shit,” he yelps, scrambling from the path and shoving the bicycle across the concrete, and kneeling over him. “Hello? Oh god,” he feels his pockets for his phone. Ah, yeah, just the day he forgets it too.
“Augh,” the boy murmurs, his eye cracking open. “Get off me,” he says, sitting upwards, shaking his head and rolling his shoulders. His arm is no longer sprawled and gangly, but rather normal albeit the blood trickling from his elbow and the large cut on his upper arm, but seemed to be in otherwise perfect shape. “God, that hurt more than I expected it to.”
“More than you- what the hell?” Sunggyu asks, and he raises his hands to the boy’s shoulders. “A-are you alright, do you need me to call you an ambulance or something?”
The boy shakes his head. “No, I don’t need any of that.” He pauses, and his face lights up. “Actually, I could use a shower,” he says nonchalantly, because you know, it’s normal to invite yourself over to the house of someone who just ran you over.
“…What?”
Sunggyu is speechless as the boy - who’d introduced himself as Nam Woohyun somewhere along the walk back - slumps down on the lone chair of the bedroom, kicking off the slippers Sunggyu had insisted on him wearing and lets out a sigh.
(It absolutely baffles Sunggyu that Woohyun had even tried to walk into his house with shoes on.)
“You’re sure you feel fine?” he asks for about the hundredth time.
“I’m completely fine,” Woohyun answers for the hundredth time.
“But your arm, it looked broken before,” Sunggyu tries. In reality, he just wants to take this kid to the hospital, leave some contact details and bolt the hell out of there.
He lifts his arm and taps the bandage he’d wrapped around his graze. “Good as new,” he smiles. “Ah, do you have any food?”
“No!” Sunggyu growls, as he sits on the edge of his bed, his eyes not leaving Woohyun’s torso. The various scathes that had tarnished his skin just an hour ago were nowhere to be seen. Not a single scratch, scab or mark littered his skin. It was smooth and milky, like that of a person who’d never stepped food outside to injure themselves. He narrows his eyebrows as his eyes land on his arm, the bandage red and sodden with blood. He bites his lip, and Woohyun watches as Sunggyu outstretches his hands and presses his hand lightly to the wound. The latter doesn’t flinch, and Sunggyu feels an overwhelming curiosity build inside him. He curls his fingers slightly, as if he was asking for permission.
“Go on,” Woohyun whispers, looking away.
There’s a suffocating silence between them. Sunggyu’s breath hitches as he closes his fingers around the bandage, and slowly unbinds it from his arm. It’s stained red with a metallic smell, but Sunggyu doesn’t draw back - he doesn’t even care. It’s the least of his worries, really, as the cloth unravels from his skin, dropping to his lap in a picturesque motion and reveals an arm no longer bleeding, cut or injured. The only thing that remained was a faint line, invisible to the eye to the point where if you hadn’t been looking for it, you wouldn’t have noticed it. Sunggyu blinks twice, and then it’s gone. He holds his breath as he steps closer, and runs a daring finger over his arm.
“How,” is all he can choke out, as he steps back onto his bed, his mind unable to think of any other coherent comments.
They sit in silence, Woohyun’s mouth set in a tight line and his eyes downcast as if he was contemplating the responsibilities of the world. It was the first time he’d seen the boy like this, a stark contrast to his appearance just moments before - from loud, enthusiastic and really fucking annoying to solemn and speechless.
“Hang on a sec,” Woohyun says finally, his voice quiet and tired as he shrugs off his coat. He closes his eyes and for a moment so brief Sunggyu thinks he’s seeing thing, an outline of feathers appear behind him. “I’m an angel.” He says it with such force and sincerity that upon hearing it, Sunggyu actually believes him.
“An angel,” Sunggyu repeats, his eyes suddenly drawn towards the faint yet luminous - wings, were they? - ghosting his back. At a glance they’re hardly noticeable, but the more he looks at them, the more prominent they appear. From faintly visible outlines to defined feathery shapes glinting in the brightness from the windows, they act almost as a prism as they reflect beams of colour onto the walls surrounding them both.
He shrugs, “Angel, seraph, tianshi, whatever you call us.” He gives a look of nonchalance as he glances around Sunggyu’s room, the cream walls barren aside from the lone Girls Generation poster slipping from its adhesive and the rhythmic ticking of the analogue clock.
Sunggyu nods as if this is completely normal, and pulls his legs up onto the bed. “Alright. And you just happened to ascend from the heavens in the direct line of my bike, right?” He says it sarcastically, but to his amusement, Woohyun takes it with every bit of seriousness.
The angel shuffles on the chair slightly, and lowers his gaze. “Um, actually, that part was intentional.” He pauses, watching Sunggyu’s expression carefully before continuing. “I’m on detention.”
“Detention?” The word feels familiar on Sunggyu’s tongue, and was definitely not something that he’d expect to hear from as heavenly a being he claimed to be. “What for? Angels can get detentions?” He pauses. “Wait, angels have school?” He shuts his mouth upon realization that his words implied a somewhat belief of this kid’s inhumanity.
Woohyun grimaces, “Um, well, I accidently stabbed a teacher.” He realises this is the wrong thing to say when Sunggyu practically splutters on air, needing his arm as leverage to prevent him from falling off the bed and onto the wooden floorboards. “Um, yeah we go to school,” he says quickly, “well, it’s more of an academy.” Sunggyu is coughing and looking at Woohyun like he’s insane. “We’re trained to fight,” he adds feebly, in an effort to calm Sunggyu’s apparent surprise. The older boy merely shakes his head and slaps his cheek lightly, as if he’s waking himself from a nightmare.
“This isn’t even a dream,” he murmurs. “I hit a psychopath with my bicycle, and now it’s wearing off on me too.” He buries his head in his pillow, continuing to speak nonsense while Woohyun stares at him quizzically, but (smartly) not opening his mouth to comment. Sunggyu sits up suddenly, causing Woohyun to jump sightly. “Am I crazy?”
Sunggyu leans back, “Um, I don’t know?” he replies. “What constitutes as crazy? I think humans in general are pretty crazy,” says thoughtfully, and Sunggyu makes a mental note in the back of his mind that asking insane people questions will result in nonsensical answers. Woohyun sees Sunggyu’s less than impressed expression, and he shuts that train of thought in its tracks. “No, not really,” he says quietly, shrugging his shoulders.
The room is silent for a bit, and Sunggyu leans closer towards Woohyun. Woohyun shifts closer towards him, almost as a reflex, and it feels for a moment that the world had narrowed to just the two of them.
“Are you really an angel?” Sunggyu says quietly, his nose wrinkling slightly as he says it. “Just making sure.”
There’s no hesitation in Woohyun’s response, “Of course,” he says, bewilderment dancing in his eyes. “That’s like me asking you if you’re human.” He stops. “You are, right?”
Sunggyu laughs, and that fragile atmosphere shatters. “Alright then, I’ll believe you.” His eyes linger on Woohyun’s wings, and he can only think to himself how ridiculous this whole situation is. “So, you stabbed a teacher.”
“I-It’s not that bad, I swear,” Woohyun says, “it just sounds bad taken out of context.” He explains to Sunggyu that they’d been taking drills in swordsmanship, and he’d taken out the wrong sequence and as a result stabbed the instructor through the forearm. “I got in trouble for not listening. That’s all.”
An image runs through Sunggyu’s mind of Woohyun freaking out as he stares at a blade dripping with blood, and he can’t hide the smirk that comes out from it.
“It’s not funny,” Woohyun pouts, “now I have these.” He pulls up his sleeves to reveal three bangles, each pitch black in colour, “They’re errand bands.” Sunggyu stares blankly, and Woohyun sighs. “I thought you people had like, stories about us and stuff?” he shakes his head. “These things weigh a ton, and I have to help three stupid humans with their stupid mundane problems, and then I’ll be free to go.”
Sunggyu laughs, “Yeah, we do have stories. And that sounds exactly like something out of a fantasy novel. Detention is supposed to be like… cleaning classrooms, or sorting gym equipment, not playing contractor.” It’s Woohyun’s turn to play the confused foreigner. “You don’t have classrooms?” He shakes his head. “God, I don’t even know what to say.”
It’s just past seven when Sunggyu wakes up, and the first thing to run through his mind is the previous day’s events. He sits up, eagerness running through him for a reason unknown to him, but he isn’t surprised in the slightest when the room is silent and there’s nobody except for him. There’s no Woohyun, there’s no angel. Only him. As he lies in bed, common sense overcomes him as he decides that he was probably high for the entire day before and that everything involving Woohyun was just some insane hallucination, because normal people don’t hit celestial beings with bicycles, let alone bring them into their bedroom and have a nice chat about the weather.
That’s at least what he likes to think until he shuffles into the bathroom to brush his teeth, only to collide into an awake and very much there Nam Woohyun.
“Oh my god,” is the only thing to come out from his mouth, and he drops a plastic cup to the floor in shock. He watches as it tumbles across the tiles and rolls around, until it comes to a stop on the side of the cupboard, before his eyes trace Woohyun’s frame, finding him to be much the same as the day before. “You’re still here.”
Woohyun blinks, “Where else would I be?”
He’s silent for a moment. “So yesterday wasn’t just a dream? No,” he murmurs, “I’m still crazy.”
Woohyun rests a hand on Sunggyu’s shoulder. “We went through this yesterday. I’m real,” he says slowly, looking into his eyes as if they would somehow calm the erratic boy in front of him.
They stand in silence for a while as Sunggyu brushes his teeth and combs his hair, occasionally glancing in the mirror at Woohyun just to remember that he’s real, that he’s there, and that there really is an angel standing in his bathroom. It’s pretty ridiculous.
“Do you need to eat?” Sunggyu asks suddenly, and Woohyun looks up at him.
“Not really,” he starts. “But I do like to. Korean food tastes nice.”
And that’s how the two of them end up sitting at the dining table with two bowls of cereal, four slices of toast and a banana each, the only noises made the clinking of cutlery and the jabbering of morning cartoons. “You don’t do this often, do you?” Sunggyu asks as Woohyun attempts to eat his cereal with chopsticks. He hands him a spoon, “Use this.”
Woohyun coughs, “I knew that, I was just experimenting,” he says quickly, dropping the chopsticks to the table and takes the spoon.
“I have to go to school,” Sunggyu says as he washes his plate.
He tilts his head, “Do you live alone?
Sunggyu stops washing for just a moment, the water running over his fingers. “No,” he answers. “My mum just works overseas a lot. I don’t think you’ll have to worry about running into her, though.” He says it with clarity, his voice much the same as it had been earlier, but there’s something about his stance that suggests something else. It’s almost an impulse for Woohyun to ask him further, but he manages to catch himself just in time.
“Alright then,” he puts on his best smile, before turning towards the staircase. Sunggyu yells after him to not open the door to strangers, or to anyone, really. Woohyun waves his arm, “I’m not five,” he snorts, and he rolls his eyes as he continues up the stairs and closes the door. He opens it a second later, “Have a good day at school,” he calls, and promptly closes it again.
“Three problems are all you need, right?” Sunggyu asks that evening, and Woohyun tilts his head and nods. “Alright then. You see this pencil?” he asks, holding up a blunted pacer. He drops it on the floor, and watches as it rolls across the floorboards and behind the desk. “Can you get it for me?”
Woohyun frowns, “It doesn’t work like that. It has to be something meaningful, I’m pretty sure.”
Sunggyu shrugs, “I’ve had that pacer since eighth grade?” he supplies, but shakes his head and sighs. “It was worth a try.”
“Or, you could help me find some real problems. That would be worth a try, considering, you know, you’re the human here with human contacts and stuff. Just saying,” he says, before spinning on his heels to inspect the shelves lining the walls.
Sunggyu sighs and buries his head in his hands. “That’s the problem,” he mumbles. “I don’t.”
There’s a heatwave in Seoul and the two boys are lying on the wooden floorboards of Sunggyu’s bedroom, attempting to keep cool with a semi-working electrical fan and several blocks of ice. Needless to say, they’re quite unsuccessful.
“Why don’t you fly?” Sunggyu asks in attempt to get their minds off the heat. In his mind he’s imagining having Woohyun as a personal fan or something. To put him to good use.
Woohyun raises his arm to where the bands were clasped tightly around his wrist. “These. They have this stupid magic in them that prevents me from pulling out my wings completely. What you saw before was only a fraction of what they really look like.” He says it in a way that makes him sound like he is bragging. “No questions, please,” Woohyun says quickly, reading Sunggyu’s facial expression, curious as usual.
“Wasn’t going to ask any anyway,” Sunggyu mutters, and slumps onto his bed in exasperation, digging out his PSP from under his pillow.
It had been like this for the past week. The two had been passing each other awkwardly through various intervals of the day: sometimes when Sunggyu woke up for school, Woohyun would be lying on the thin mattress laid out on the floorboards, practically asking to be stepped on. At other times he’d be nowhere to be seen, and on his way out Sunggyu would see him sitting on the roof gazing at the sky with an unreadable expression on his face.
The routine breaks when Sunggyu comes bounding into the room on a Tuesday afternoon with a crumpled piece of paper in his grip.
“There’s this guy in my class who I overheard during lunch time, and I think it’s the perfect opportunity for you to do your thing.”
Woohyun blinks up at him from behind the magazine he’s reading. “My thing? What’s my thing?”
Sunggyu walks up to him and takes the magazine from his grasp, “Your whole angel-saving, wrist band demolishing whatever!” he cries impatiently, waving the paper under Woohyun’s nose.
Woohyun rolls his eyes and takes the sheet from him, reading the messy Hangul with a little bit difficulty because Sunggyu’s handwriting is really that bad.
“Lee Howon?” he asks, tilting his head.
“Yeah, he’s kind of short and likes to dance, he leads the club and um,” he stops. “That’s all I actually know about him.”
Woohyun sits up, “Isn’t he your classmate?” he asks him, tilting his head to the side.
Sunggyu mumbles something, and Woohyun tells him to speak up. Sunggyu swallows uncomfortably, “Doesn’t mean I’m close with him. Anyway, are you going to help him or whatever?” he asks, changing the subject and avoiding Woohyun’s eyes, “He’s part of the dance club, so he’ll be at my school until five thirty.”
After much convincing, Woohyun finally gets his ass off Sunggyu’s bed and the two are on the street, taking step after step up the hill leading towards Sunggyu’s high school.
“You walk this every day?” Woohyun asks, his breath short a bit as they continue.
Sunggyu shakes his head, “I used to ride my bike up a path on the other side,” he says, shooting a look at Woohyun. “But recently I’ve been walking.”
Woohyun nods, “Walking is good for you.”
Sunggyu rolls his eyes, mutters something intelligible, and looks forward at the road. The two walk the remainder of the way in silence, the only sounds being the passing cars and the scraping of their shoes against the pavement. “This is it,” Sunggyu says, stopping in front of an impressive looking building. “We have… forty minutes before they finish,” he says, grimacing.
“Forty?” Woohyun cries, putting his hands on his hips and sighing dramatically. “That’s forty minutes I could have lazed around and did nothing,” he tells him.
“Not like you don’t always do nothing,” Sunggyu bites, and Woohyun opens his mouth in mock offense. “Just sit on a bench or something, my school’s kind of pretty.”
Woohyun takes his advice, sitting on the concrete surrounding a tree, admiring the green grass that was plentiful across the grounds as well as the flowers, full in bloom from the spring that had just passed. The smell of summer is sharp in the air and the sun is still streaming brightly and hot, and even the slight noise of the still-running clubs is refreshing in a way, giving the school a feeling of completeness.
“Woohyun-ah!” calls Sunggyu, and he turns to find the older boy staring at him, a soccer ball held tightly between his hands. “Can you kick?”
He turns out to be a better kicker than Sunggyu had ever imagined. He shoots a clean goal from mid-field with a yell, and is surprisingly talented at tricks, causing Sunggyu to become embarrassed when it’s his turn to show his skills.
“I’ll pass this time,” he says quickly, “I had sport earlier today, so my muscles hurt.”
Woohyun laughs, “You’re weak.” He kicks the ball with a natural ease making it look so simple, before kicking it into the goals. “Let’s put this away,” he says, as he runs to retrieve it. They walk in silence, Woohyun dribbling the ball from foot to foot, occasionally passing it to Sunggyu who would always pass it back the very next step, and never later.
“The gym stays open until clubs finish,” he explains as he puts the ball back with the others. “For clubs to pack up and stuff.” It’s when he turns from the ball room that he notices that Woohyun isn’t listening, but rather looking elsewhere to the mezzanine floor half obscured by curtains.
“There’s someone up there,” he says simply, and he walks towards it without another word. He’s ignoring Sunggyu’s shouts of him to wait, moving from a walk to a jog as he races up the stairs and stops when he gets there.
A lone figure dances, the music loud and fierce as his limbs move in accordance to the beat. It’s amazing, really, the flexibility and fluid movements he makes, each seeming so simple as he pulls each one off with ease. The room reeks of sweat and hard work, and Woohyun feels his throat clench up at the sheer beauty of it. The music fades, and Lee Howon freezes, his limbs locked in position until the very last note.
“Was I good?” he asks as he crouches to the ground, tipping the contents of his water bottle into his mouth as if it were life itself. His breath is haggard and short, beads of sweat drip from his forehead and his neck giving his body a thin sheen of it, a testament to his hard work, but he gives off a refreshing feeling nonetheless. Woohyun nods, and Howon laughs. A bell rings, sending echoes throughout the empty room, one ring, two rings, three rings. “At least I had an audience for my last performance.”
He blinks, “What… What do you mean?”
Howon nods solemnly, “They’ve cut my club. I’m the only member, after all. They said I need four more people for it to be a proper club, but it’s kind of hard to promote when they won’t let me perform eh?” He grabs a towel from his bag, wiping himself dry before crouching gingerly to it, carefully placing his belongings inside and slinging it over his shoulder. “We have to clear out of here now, the bell’s gone.” He sighs as he takes one last look around the room, and places his hand to the window. “I wonder what’ll go on here now. Chess club?” He laughs at the suggestion. His hand moves to the light switch and with one fluid movement flicks it off, and the whole room goes dim. “Let’s go.”
Together, they trudge down the staircase only for Howon to stop just before the last one. “S-Sunggyu?” he says, tilting his head. “It is you.” He pauses. “Why are you here?”
“Oh, hyung!” Woohyun says, and Howon just looks between them confused.
“Who’s he?” he asks Sunggyu, and Sunggyu swallows, saying that Woohyun is his cousin visiting from out of town before he can say something stupid. “I see. He kind of… walked upstairs and saw me dancing and stuff.”
Woohyun nods, “Yeah! hyung, you should join his dance team.”
Sunggyu blinks. “What?”
He continues, “He said that his club got closed down, if you join maybe it’ll stay open.” Sunggyu shoots him a death glare. Had it been anything else, he may have considered. But dancing?
But when he sees the way that Howon’s eyes light up at the suggestion, he holds his tongue for just a moment. “Alright,” he finds himself saying, and no sooner than he says it, he wishes that he could take back his words. “Wait, what?”
Of course, it’s too late, and Woohyun smiles, pulling his arm around Sunggyu’s shoulder. “Good as!” he says. He looks up to Howon and flashes a thumbs up, “So what happens?”
He swallows, “Are you joining too?”
Woohyun’s hesitant for a second, and his eyes flicker to Sunggyu. “Yeah,” he says slowly, “why not? I’m only in town for a while though.”
Howon shrugs, “It’s alright. You’re one more person after all,” he smiles.
They make arrangements to meet the next day on the grass field, as he no longer has rights to use the mezzanine. Sunggyu’s unsure as he and Woohyun make their way home. He admits that the way that Howon’s face lit up earlier and the way that his entire mood brightened was a good feeling, but the fact that he’d just signed himself up to a dance team was just over his head. Woohyun, on the other hand, has no problem whatsoever with the situation.
“Isn’t this great?” he says, bouncing on Sunggyu’s sofa as the older boy searches the fridge for their dinner. “It’s an actual problem. Well, it’s not really a problem, more of a situation, but it’s still something that I can help him with!”
Sunggyu turns from the fridge, “It’s great for you,” he says sharply, before sighing. “I can’t dance for shit.” He grimaces as he remembers sport class the previous year, where in groups they had to perform a dance. His group had been lazy and just done some kind of mashed up rendition of Super Junior’s Sorry Sorry mixed with Hoot, and yet he still managed to screw it up immensely. “I can’t do this, Woohyun.”
The younger frowns as he grabs a plate from the microwave, placing it on the table. “What do you mean?” he asks, sitting down. “You don’t have to be good at it. He just needs people,” Woohyun murmurs, poking at the food with his chopsticks.
Sunggyu swats his hands away as he places the pot of rice in the centre of the table, before pulling up a chair opposite him. “That’s not the point,” he tells him, clinking his chopsticks to the bowl in annoyance. “If we dance like shit, nobody’s going to join the club you know.”
This is a fact that Woohyun hadn’t considered. Technically, he hadn’t considered a lot of things aside from ‘holy shit this is an actual problem and will take me one step closer to being home, let’s do this’. “That’s why you learn, right?”
If there was something that set Woohyun aside from anyone Sunggyu had ever met, it was his naivety when it came to things Sunggyu would deem extremely normal. It’s cute in a way, but after some time it becomes tiresome, which is exactly how he feels at this moment.
“I don’t think I can,” he mumbles into his rice.
Woohyun stares down at his plate. “You really have image issues,” he says quietly. “I’m sure you’ll do fine.”
It’s no surprise that Woohyun is a natural when it comes to dancing, with their first meeting on the warm grassy field proving him no difficulty. Maybe it’s in his heavenly, otherworldly DNA to just succeed at everything he tries to do, but regardless, he’s damn good at it.
“You’re amazing,” Howon says in their break as the three of them chug at their bottles of water. “Are you sure you’ve never danced before?”
Woohyun shakes his head, “Never. I suppose I’m a natural, huh?”
They laugh, and Sunggyu wants to punch them.
Catching his expression, Woohyun shoots a sympathetic look towards Sunggyu. He wasn’t bad, but he wasn’t getting the routine as quickly or as sharply as Woohyun was. “You’re doing alright , hyung, he tells him. He collapses onto the ground and stares into the sky, sighing.
“I hate this.”
Woohyun chuckles and sits beside him. “You hate everything.”
Sunggyu nods at this. “Sounds about right.” They sit in silence, but Sunggyu’s okay with it. And when Sunggyu is okay with things, Woohyun’s okay with them too.
A minute or so later, Howon joins them, and they take a prolonged break from dancing in the heat to have a talk of some sort.
“Where are you from?” he asks Woohyun, and Sunggyu’s eyes quickly dart to him, probably a warning for him to not say anything stupid.
“Jeollabuk-do,” he answers, and Sunggyu stares. “Sunggyu hyung’s from there as well, except he moved. Why he’d move here though is beyond me,” he says, a smirk playing his lips when he sees the shocked look on the elder’s face. He’d never even mentioned his childhood to Woohyun, and he can only stare in shock as Woohyun shamelessly tells it to a guy he’s hardly even talked to.
Howon tilts his head in confusion, “Oh, you’re from Jeollabuk-do?” he asks Sunggyu, “I thought you were from Seoul.” He’s quiet for a moment, “Oh, but you never talk to anyone in class, so I guess that’s normal…”
Silence settles between them, and Sunggyu thinks that if he was to lift out his fingers, he could actually touch the awkward. “I guess there’s nothing to talk about?” he supplies. This is him, Kim Sunggyu, the best at making friends. He laughs at himself in spite.
A cough from Woohyun breaks the tense atmosphere, “Let’s keep going. We’re doing pretty well, right?” he asks Howon, and Howon’s expression brightens considerably.
“We’re doing great. We might be able to perform at next week’s Grind,” he says, and both Woohyun and Sunggyu can hear the want lacing his voice.
“What’s a Grind?”
“Every month, the clubs in our school have a show in the courtyard called the Grind. We pretty much just show off our stuff, whatever it is we do, and try to recruit new members. I suppose it’s our best bet towards gaining new members,” he explains, his arm outstretched as he practices a move.
It makes a lot of sense to Woohyun, for them to be aiming for an event like this. The determination and excitement not only released from Howon, but surprisingly from him as well drives him to continue day after day despite the biting heat, and it’s all his entire mind seems to be geared towards. He spends his time in the park nearby while Sunggyu and Howon are at school, practicing aggressively to his own reflection trapped in the glassy doors of the outlining stores. It’s in this motivation that he begins to lose sight of what’s closest to him, and it’s not until the night before they’re due to perform that it hits him in the face, so to speak.
“Hyung.” Woohyun says, and he grabs Sunggyu’s elbow. “You need to raise it up further. Also, you’re off beat by a second.” He takes his arm and bends it upwards by the slightest degree, and Sunggyu makes a sharp hiss of pain.
“Ow, stop,” Sunggyu tells him, his words catching in his throat. Woohyun shakes his head and pushes Sunggyu’s elbow further backwards. “I said stop, damn it!”
Sunggyu regrets it a second after it happens. His mouth turns dry as he retracts his fist, and Woohyun stumbles back against the wall, his hand raised to his cheek as he winces in pain. He wipes his mouth, and his eyes widen in alarm as a small trickle of blood seeps from his lip, burst from Sunggyu’s punch. “Fuck, hyung, what the fuck was that for?”
He opens his mouth, but what could he say in his defence? ‘Fuck, I’m sorry Woohyun, I’m sorry that you’re correcting my mistakes which is something you’re supposed to do as we only have a few more hours left’? Maybe ‘I’m sorry for hitting you, I wasn’t thinking’, or even just an apology of the simplest sort would be suffice, but instead he takes a jab at Woohyun’s pride while simultaneously blaming it on him, and he hates every moment of it.
“What, so because you’ve been practising all this time while I’ve been busy, while Howon’s been busy, you’re suddenly the best at this right? Now you can just correct every little mistake that I make, that you’re your duty to point out what’s wrong with every single step?” His words don’t even make sense, but he’s just so fucking angry at everything in this moment that he doesn’t stop to think about what he’s saying.
“Did I do something wrong?” Woohyun asks, and his tone is dead serious. “Look, whatever I did, I’m sorry, okay?”
Sunggyu glares at him. “Lee Howon’s this, Lee Howon’s that. Practice more, hyung! Don’t forget to practice! How long have you practiced for?” He shakes his head and closes his eyes, “Forget it. Practice until you die, for all I care,” he says, and proceeds to tip Woohyun’s belongings from their duffle bag, stalking back home.
One minute after his outburst, Kim Sunggyu feels like shit. Of course, he felt fucking amazing while he was yelling at Woohyun, since he’d been nothing but fucking irritating for the past six days, but his knuckles sting from where he’d punched him and there’s a feeling inside him that perhaps he’d been the one who suffered more from their argument. He feels empty as he turns quietly, the street barren. What, did he expect Woohyun to have followed him back? He isn’t even sure what he’s expecting.
Sitting under the lamplight of the street, Sunggyu counts the cars that pass by in however many minutes he spends on the curb next to a convenience store. He reaches into his bag and pulls out his phone, his battery low and the screen blinking 10:03PM. It’s late, but not late enough. Rolling his eyes, he grabs his back and trudges his way back home, taking extra care to extend every step and even takes the longest route back he can manage. He stands in front of his house, his keys in hand as he stands at the doorstep.
He’s half expecting Woohyun to be there waiting for him, but of course, he’s not. Not even when Sunggyu goes inside, locks the door and sits on the edge of his bed can he hear the stupid chatter of him, and somewhere along the way he begins to miss it.
It’s only the next morning, when Sunggyu is awoken by the sound of his phone beeping, vibrations rattling his bedside drawer, that he realizes he really misses Woohyun. He wouldn’t describe the feeling as missing him really, since he’s still pissed off at him and his overall stupidity, but it’s something too damn close.
이호원: Are you ready?
He sinks back into his bed. Any other day he’d have been fine with the grind, even if he did hate the whole dancing aspect of it. But at that moment he felt like shit, and he knew he would even more so should he happen to see Nam Woohyun’s face, which he was sure to do.
A second text rattles the stand, and he reluctantly shifts himself out of his bed and onto the floor - landing on the mattress usually occupied by Woohyun, just beside his bed and barely six centimetres off the floor. Closing his eyes, he wills for that stupid guy to leave his mind already, because he’s clogging up his thoughts and distracting him from what’s more important; finding something that would somewhat fit the theme Howon had set for them. Some time along him sifting through his closet for his jeans, the thought of Woohyun finding clothes crosses his mind.
“Fuck him,” he murmurs, “he can do everything himself anyway, right?”
He packs a spare set of clothes.
“Sunggyu!” Howon calls, and he waves his arm from across the field. Sunggyu jogs over to him, his black bag hitting the back of his legs as he runs and he’s more than glad when he reaches his destination to promptly dump it on the floor. “Good to see you,” he smiles.
He returns the smile, albeit awkwardly, “I’m nervous,” he tells him, laughing slightly. His expression’s cut short when Woohyun appears by Howon’s side, looking cheerful as ever and all dressed up ready to go. What makes it worse is the sweet yet cruel smile poised on his face, as if butter couldn’t melt in his mouth.
Howon smiles weakly, “Yeah, we’re all feeling the nerves. Woohyun couldn’t sleep the whole night,” he smirks, giving him a light shove on the shoulder. “Kept whining about stuffing something up.”
Sunggyu blinks, “Wait, you were with him last night?”
“You mean you didn’t know? I thought he’s staying with you?” Howon asks, stepping back slightly to look at the two of them, watching as the tension between the two rises sure and steady.
He shrugs, “Well obviously he wasn’t last night.”
Howon nods slowly, “Um, yeah. Hang on a sec, I just have to confirm our sport in the Grind,” he says, excusing himself and heading off. Sunggyu knows that it’s just some sort of excuse to make him and Woohyun talk out whatever the hell they were going through, but he’s stupid enough to follow through with it.
Behind his back, he’s running his fingers along his knuckles, as if he could still feel the blow from the previous night like it was seconds ago. There’s nothing showing on Woohyun’s face that would suggest that anything had happened to him - his healing speed is no joke.
He takes a step forward, “Sunggyu hyung,” he says quietly. There’s no anger in his voice, no annoyance, no nothing. It’s blank and clear, and Sunggyu doesn’t know what to think. “I’m sorry I didn’t go back to your place last night, but I figured you were angry at me so…” he looks down at the black shirt and jeans he’s wearing, and he closes his fingers around the hem. “Howon’s the only other person I know aside from you, so I’m sorry if I made you worry.”
Sunggyu almost laughs. “Worry? You think I worried about you?” He shakes his head. “Who do you think you are?” He closes his eyes and sighs, before turning and walking away, his body moving forward and his heart moving back, and it’s the worst he’s felt in days.
Woohyun closes his eyes and sits on the grass, a pout fitting his lips as he stretches on the lawn. Not that he would openly admit it, but Sunggyu’s words hurt him a lot. His fingers scout around him, pulling at the grass and making holes in the dirt when his eyes rest on the black bag just a few metres from him. “Sunggyu hyung’s bag?” he says, and he crawls towards it, zipping it open without a second thought. Sunggyu was already pissed off at him, and he doubted it could get any worse regardless.
Towel. Drink bottle. Wallet. How boring, he thinks, opening a cloth bag wedged in the side.
“..Wh..” his mouth hangs open as he pulls out a pair of jeans and a neatly folded t-shirt, and his forehead creases with thought. Their routine wasn’t ridiculously long, so he doubted that they were spare clothes. Lending them to someone? It was something that went unsaid, but he knew that Sunggyu had no friends.
Aside from Woohyun, that is, because he definitely considers them as friends, even if the older didn’t.
“I’m sure you didn’t worry about me, hyung."
“I don’t get how you’re not nervous,” Howon says, elbowing Woohyun in the shoulder.
Woohyun laughs and pats Howon on the back, assuring him that he’ll do fine. “You’ll do great,” he says, “you’re amazing.”
Sunggyu is stuck third wheeling their happy conversation with a strange urge to slap them both, or at least shove earplugs in his ears. It’s not that he’s jealous of Howon, but more that he feels like he’s nothing more than an accessory to their routine. After all, Woohyun and Howon are obviously the stars of the show, and Sunggyu in the back doing his thing, whatever that is. Performance aside, he can see the smile on Woohyun’s lips every time Howon makes him laugh, the sparks in his eyes that bring his face to life when they talk and the raw feeling of familiarity mixed with friendship they seem to exude after a mere week of knowing each other.
He’s jealous of Howon.
The groups of students burst into applause, and Howon stops his talking mid-sentence to take a deep breath. “It’s us, guys,” he says, his voice small and eyes wild. To tell the truth, Sunggyu has never seen Howon this scared before. In class he’s the quiet boy with a hidden fearlessness, a charm never shy of keeping the girls on edge. Yet in front of him, he’s so normal, excitement and fear running through him, sending adrenaline through his veins as he breaks into a normal Howon smile. “Let’s do this.”
“The next group performing will be our very own dance club,” the MC, a tall and neat-looking senior announced as he pointed the microphone in the direction of Sunggyu, Woohyun and Howon. Some people cheer. Some people clap, but the crowd is noticeably softer than they had been for other performances. Sunggyu hears a mix of yells including, ‘We have a dance club?’ and ‘Who’s that guy? The one on the end?’ (Of course, it was Woohyun). Sunggyu is wearing a black face mask, since he knows that he’s going to screw it up, and hey, it’s better to stuff it up anonymously, right?
He faces the crowd, not immensely huge or anything, but still bigger than what he’s used to facing for presentations and stuff. He’s almost glad that his hair had grown out pretty long recently, as it almost (not really) blocks out the faces of the onlookers. His heart is beating a million per second, and for a moment he lets his mind wander.
The familiar beat of the song starts, the first note spurring recognition in his mind and his body moves automatically in rhythm, each movement coming naturally to him. Each step, each swing and dip of the head is set in motion, the three of them dancing uniformly to the watching crowd, and Sunggyu thinks for a moment that he’s doing alright.
When Sunggyu makes his first mistake, it’s subtle but noticeable, and he closes his eyes as people point in his direction, leaning into their friends to whisper and laugh at his slip up. The second time, it’s not as bad, and he’s able to continue without it even looking like he stuffed up. But the third time he stuffs up, he knows he’s fucked. After all, you can’t dance if you don’t remember the moves.
So when he stands there, looking utterly confused and lost, he’s glad for his mask. At least this way, nobody will point at him when he walks in the corridors, or sits in the library reading. His eyes are closed as he waits for the next part of the song, but frowns when there’s no talking, no laughing, and he opens his eyes just a little to look at the audience.
Nobody is laughing, nobody is pointing, it’s just a sea of people captivated by their performance, and it’s beautiful. He turns his head to the side, and Woohyun shoots him a smile, his hands by his side and unmoving, just like the rest of him.
Realization clicks inside of Sunggyu. The song ends with thunderous applause, and cheering that causes him to wince and cover his right ear. A smile ripples through him, turning the corners of his mouth upwards, and he leaps towards Woohyun in a fluid movement, pulling him into a hug. He buries his head in the younger’s shoulder, feeling his hair tickle him as he holds him tightly.
“Thank you,” he says, soft enough for just him to hear. They pull apart, and Sunggyu stares at him, still smiling slightly. “Why did you do that? I’ve been such a bitch to you,” his eyes fall on the last sentence, “I’m sorry.”
Woohyun smiles at him. “I’m an angel,” he replies, “I save people.”
Sunggyu makes a face. “That was lame. Really, why did you do it?”
His eyes fall slightly, “I found your bag,” he murmurs, shrugging his shoulder, and Sunggyu’s ears tint pink. “You’re a thoughtful person, hyung.”
They stand together, bowing awkwardly in front of the audience, stupid smiles plastered on their faces as they walk off the stage together.
“You guys were great!” Howon yells at them, giving the two of them a slap to the back. Sunggyu scoffs, telling him that he was the main act (which is true, because both he and Woohyun had been stationary for a good thirty seconds, meaning Howon was having a solo show by himself). He laughs, and Woohyun swears that his cheeks turned red, even if it was for just a second.
“Do you think your club is going to start back up again?” Woohyun asks him.
He beams, “Actually, I’ve had about seven people already ask me,” he laughs lightly. “I really don’t know what I can do to show my appreciation for all your effort, I mean… just thank you so much.”
A light catches Woohyun’s eyes, and he turns his gaze to his wrist where a single bracelet lightens from slate to grey, and from grey to a white so pure it’s almost glowing. He clamps his hand, and raises his eyes from his arm. He takes a quick glance at Sunggyu, but Sunggyu’s staring at his wrist, his eyes wide. Their gazes meet, and Woohyun flashes him a quick grin.
“You’re welcome,” he says, “honestly, it was a lot of fun.” He looks back to Sunggyu, and a wicked grin graces his features. “Even managed to get Gyu hyung here a friend,” he adds, and Sunggyu splutters in shock.
“Y-You-I,” his eyes dart between both Woohyun and Howon, the former bent over with laughter, but the former laughing as well.
Howon opens his mouth, “Sunggyu, you should talk to more people. You’re not even bad, honestly. We’re always wondering what we have to do to get you to talk.”
Sunggyu looks at the floor. “I…” he stops, because he has nothing to say.
“Well, talk to me at least, okay?” Howon asks, and Sunggyu gives him a smile.
“Alright.”
2/2
Pairing/Focus: Woohyun/Sunggyu
Rating: pg
Summary: Sunggyu finds out the hard way that hitting an angel with your bicycle isn’t good luck.
Final word count: ~13000
It’s four twenty seven on a shitty summer’s day when it happens.
“And Kim Sunggyu?” the teacher says after handing out everyone’s math tests. “You’ll need to stay behind after school and see me.” The fact that she says it loudly in front of the whole class with that smirk teachers have when they think things are funny makes him want to slap her across the face.
Snickers erupt through the class as his peers sneak less-than-subtle glances in his direction, and he has nowhere to look but at the less than satisfactory mark branding his paper. “Yes teacher,” he murmurs in reply, making sure to avoid all eye contact with his classmates as he shoves the paper in the back of his textbook.
After thirty minutes of getting an earful from a batty old woman, he’s finally able to trudge to bike racks and head home. It’s been pretty much the worst day he’s had in a while: from being made fun of by his math teacher in first class, getting pounded by another class in softball to forgetting his wallet and subsequently having no lunch, Sunggyu reckons that there’s nothing that could make the day worse.
Which is a pretty logical assumption, because not many people think that they’ll run someone over with a bicycle.
A yell of some sort escapes his lips, his hands and knees grazed and stinging from the asphalt path. His sight is the last sense to return, and he almost has a heart attack when he sees a boy collapsed under his bicycle, his arm askew and seeping blood from an open graze. “Oh shit,” he yelps, scrambling from the path and shoving the bicycle across the concrete, and kneeling over him. “Hello? Oh god,” he feels his pockets for his phone. Ah, yeah, just the day he forgets it too.
“Augh,” the boy murmurs, his eye cracking open. “Get off me,” he says, sitting upwards, shaking his head and rolling his shoulders. His arm is no longer sprawled and gangly, but rather normal albeit the blood trickling from his elbow and the large cut on his upper arm, but seemed to be in otherwise perfect shape. “God, that hurt more than I expected it to.”
“More than you- what the hell?” Sunggyu asks, and he raises his hands to the boy’s shoulders. “A-are you alright, do you need me to call you an ambulance or something?”
The boy shakes his head. “No, I don’t need any of that.” He pauses, and his face lights up. “Actually, I could use a shower,” he says nonchalantly, because you know, it’s normal to invite yourself over to the house of someone who just ran you over.
“…What?”
Sunggyu is speechless as the boy - who’d introduced himself as Nam Woohyun somewhere along the walk back - slumps down on the lone chair of the bedroom, kicking off the slippers Sunggyu had insisted on him wearing and lets out a sigh.
(It absolutely baffles Sunggyu that Woohyun had even tried to walk into his house with shoes on.)
“You’re sure you feel fine?” he asks for about the hundredth time.
“I’m completely fine,” Woohyun answers for the hundredth time.
“But your arm, it looked broken before,” Sunggyu tries. In reality, he just wants to take this kid to the hospital, leave some contact details and bolt the hell out of there.
He lifts his arm and taps the bandage he’d wrapped around his graze. “Good as new,” he smiles. “Ah, do you have any food?”
“No!” Sunggyu growls, as he sits on the edge of his bed, his eyes not leaving Woohyun’s torso. The various scathes that had tarnished his skin just an hour ago were nowhere to be seen. Not a single scratch, scab or mark littered his skin. It was smooth and milky, like that of a person who’d never stepped food outside to injure themselves. He narrows his eyebrows as his eyes land on his arm, the bandage red and sodden with blood. He bites his lip, and Woohyun watches as Sunggyu outstretches his hands and presses his hand lightly to the wound. The latter doesn’t flinch, and Sunggyu feels an overwhelming curiosity build inside him. He curls his fingers slightly, as if he was asking for permission.
“Go on,” Woohyun whispers, looking away.
There’s a suffocating silence between them. Sunggyu’s breath hitches as he closes his fingers around the bandage, and slowly unbinds it from his arm. It’s stained red with a metallic smell, but Sunggyu doesn’t draw back - he doesn’t even care. It’s the least of his worries, really, as the cloth unravels from his skin, dropping to his lap in a picturesque motion and reveals an arm no longer bleeding, cut or injured. The only thing that remained was a faint line, invisible to the eye to the point where if you hadn’t been looking for it, you wouldn’t have noticed it. Sunggyu blinks twice, and then it’s gone. He holds his breath as he steps closer, and runs a daring finger over his arm.
“How,” is all he can choke out, as he steps back onto his bed, his mind unable to think of any other coherent comments.
They sit in silence, Woohyun’s mouth set in a tight line and his eyes downcast as if he was contemplating the responsibilities of the world. It was the first time he’d seen the boy like this, a stark contrast to his appearance just moments before - from loud, enthusiastic and really fucking annoying to solemn and speechless.
“Hang on a sec,” Woohyun says finally, his voice quiet and tired as he shrugs off his coat. He closes his eyes and for a moment so brief Sunggyu thinks he’s seeing thing, an outline of feathers appear behind him. “I’m an angel.” He says it with such force and sincerity that upon hearing it, Sunggyu actually believes him.
“An angel,” Sunggyu repeats, his eyes suddenly drawn towards the faint yet luminous - wings, were they? - ghosting his back. At a glance they’re hardly noticeable, but the more he looks at them, the more prominent they appear. From faintly visible outlines to defined feathery shapes glinting in the brightness from the windows, they act almost as a prism as they reflect beams of colour onto the walls surrounding them both.
He shrugs, “Angel, seraph, tianshi, whatever you call us.” He gives a look of nonchalance as he glances around Sunggyu’s room, the cream walls barren aside from the lone Girls Generation poster slipping from its adhesive and the rhythmic ticking of the analogue clock.
Sunggyu nods as if this is completely normal, and pulls his legs up onto the bed. “Alright. And you just happened to ascend from the heavens in the direct line of my bike, right?” He says it sarcastically, but to his amusement, Woohyun takes it with every bit of seriousness.
The angel shuffles on the chair slightly, and lowers his gaze. “Um, actually, that part was intentional.” He pauses, watching Sunggyu’s expression carefully before continuing. “I’m on detention.”
“Detention?” The word feels familiar on Sunggyu’s tongue, and was definitely not something that he’d expect to hear from as heavenly a being he claimed to be. “What for? Angels can get detentions?” He pauses. “Wait, angels have school?” He shuts his mouth upon realization that his words implied a somewhat belief of this kid’s inhumanity.
Woohyun grimaces, “Um, well, I accidently stabbed a teacher.” He realises this is the wrong thing to say when Sunggyu practically splutters on air, needing his arm as leverage to prevent him from falling off the bed and onto the wooden floorboards. “Um, yeah we go to school,” he says quickly, “well, it’s more of an academy.” Sunggyu is coughing and looking at Woohyun like he’s insane. “We’re trained to fight,” he adds feebly, in an effort to calm Sunggyu’s apparent surprise. The older boy merely shakes his head and slaps his cheek lightly, as if he’s waking himself from a nightmare.
“This isn’t even a dream,” he murmurs. “I hit a psychopath with my bicycle, and now it’s wearing off on me too.” He buries his head in his pillow, continuing to speak nonsense while Woohyun stares at him quizzically, but (smartly) not opening his mouth to comment. Sunggyu sits up suddenly, causing Woohyun to jump sightly. “Am I crazy?”
Sunggyu leans back, “Um, I don’t know?” he replies. “What constitutes as crazy? I think humans in general are pretty crazy,” says thoughtfully, and Sunggyu makes a mental note in the back of his mind that asking insane people questions will result in nonsensical answers. Woohyun sees Sunggyu’s less than impressed expression, and he shuts that train of thought in its tracks. “No, not really,” he says quietly, shrugging his shoulders.
The room is silent for a bit, and Sunggyu leans closer towards Woohyun. Woohyun shifts closer towards him, almost as a reflex, and it feels for a moment that the world had narrowed to just the two of them.
“Are you really an angel?” Sunggyu says quietly, his nose wrinkling slightly as he says it. “Just making sure.”
There’s no hesitation in Woohyun’s response, “Of course,” he says, bewilderment dancing in his eyes. “That’s like me asking you if you’re human.” He stops. “You are, right?”
Sunggyu laughs, and that fragile atmosphere shatters. “Alright then, I’ll believe you.” His eyes linger on Woohyun’s wings, and he can only think to himself how ridiculous this whole situation is. “So, you stabbed a teacher.”
“I-It’s not that bad, I swear,” Woohyun says, “it just sounds bad taken out of context.” He explains to Sunggyu that they’d been taking drills in swordsmanship, and he’d taken out the wrong sequence and as a result stabbed the instructor through the forearm. “I got in trouble for not listening. That’s all.”
An image runs through Sunggyu’s mind of Woohyun freaking out as he stares at a blade dripping with blood, and he can’t hide the smirk that comes out from it.
“It’s not funny,” Woohyun pouts, “now I have these.” He pulls up his sleeves to reveal three bangles, each pitch black in colour, “They’re errand bands.” Sunggyu stares blankly, and Woohyun sighs. “I thought you people had like, stories about us and stuff?” he shakes his head. “These things weigh a ton, and I have to help three stupid humans with their stupid mundane problems, and then I’ll be free to go.”
Sunggyu laughs, “Yeah, we do have stories. And that sounds exactly like something out of a fantasy novel. Detention is supposed to be like… cleaning classrooms, or sorting gym equipment, not playing contractor.” It’s Woohyun’s turn to play the confused foreigner. “You don’t have classrooms?” He shakes his head. “God, I don’t even know what to say.”
It’s just past seven when Sunggyu wakes up, and the first thing to run through his mind is the previous day’s events. He sits up, eagerness running through him for a reason unknown to him, but he isn’t surprised in the slightest when the room is silent and there’s nobody except for him. There’s no Woohyun, there’s no angel. Only him. As he lies in bed, common sense overcomes him as he decides that he was probably high for the entire day before and that everything involving Woohyun was just some insane hallucination, because normal people don’t hit celestial beings with bicycles, let alone bring them into their bedroom and have a nice chat about the weather.
That’s at least what he likes to think until he shuffles into the bathroom to brush his teeth, only to collide into an awake and very much there Nam Woohyun.
“Oh my god,” is the only thing to come out from his mouth, and he drops a plastic cup to the floor in shock. He watches as it tumbles across the tiles and rolls around, until it comes to a stop on the side of the cupboard, before his eyes trace Woohyun’s frame, finding him to be much the same as the day before. “You’re still here.”
Woohyun blinks, “Where else would I be?”
He’s silent for a moment. “So yesterday wasn’t just a dream? No,” he murmurs, “I’m still crazy.”
Woohyun rests a hand on Sunggyu’s shoulder. “We went through this yesterday. I’m real,” he says slowly, looking into his eyes as if they would somehow calm the erratic boy in front of him.
They stand in silence for a while as Sunggyu brushes his teeth and combs his hair, occasionally glancing in the mirror at Woohyun just to remember that he’s real, that he’s there, and that there really is an angel standing in his bathroom. It’s pretty ridiculous.
“Do you need to eat?” Sunggyu asks suddenly, and Woohyun looks up at him.
“Not really,” he starts. “But I do like to. Korean food tastes nice.”
And that’s how the two of them end up sitting at the dining table with two bowls of cereal, four slices of toast and a banana each, the only noises made the clinking of cutlery and the jabbering of morning cartoons. “You don’t do this often, do you?” Sunggyu asks as Woohyun attempts to eat his cereal with chopsticks. He hands him a spoon, “Use this.”
Woohyun coughs, “I knew that, I was just experimenting,” he says quickly, dropping the chopsticks to the table and takes the spoon.
“I have to go to school,” Sunggyu says as he washes his plate.
He tilts his head, “Do you live alone?
Sunggyu stops washing for just a moment, the water running over his fingers. “No,” he answers. “My mum just works overseas a lot. I don’t think you’ll have to worry about running into her, though.” He says it with clarity, his voice much the same as it had been earlier, but there’s something about his stance that suggests something else. It’s almost an impulse for Woohyun to ask him further, but he manages to catch himself just in time.
“Alright then,” he puts on his best smile, before turning towards the staircase. Sunggyu yells after him to not open the door to strangers, or to anyone, really. Woohyun waves his arm, “I’m not five,” he snorts, and he rolls his eyes as he continues up the stairs and closes the door. He opens it a second later, “Have a good day at school,” he calls, and promptly closes it again.
“Three problems are all you need, right?” Sunggyu asks that evening, and Woohyun tilts his head and nods. “Alright then. You see this pencil?” he asks, holding up a blunted pacer. He drops it on the floor, and watches as it rolls across the floorboards and behind the desk. “Can you get it for me?”
Woohyun frowns, “It doesn’t work like that. It has to be something meaningful, I’m pretty sure.”
Sunggyu shrugs, “I’ve had that pacer since eighth grade?” he supplies, but shakes his head and sighs. “It was worth a try.”
“Or, you could help me find some real problems. That would be worth a try, considering, you know, you’re the human here with human contacts and stuff. Just saying,” he says, before spinning on his heels to inspect the shelves lining the walls.
Sunggyu sighs and buries his head in his hands. “That’s the problem,” he mumbles. “I don’t.”
There’s a heatwave in Seoul and the two boys are lying on the wooden floorboards of Sunggyu’s bedroom, attempting to keep cool with a semi-working electrical fan and several blocks of ice. Needless to say, they’re quite unsuccessful.
“Why don’t you fly?” Sunggyu asks in attempt to get their minds off the heat. In his mind he’s imagining having Woohyun as a personal fan or something. To put him to good use.
Woohyun raises his arm to where the bands were clasped tightly around his wrist. “These. They have this stupid magic in them that prevents me from pulling out my wings completely. What you saw before was only a fraction of what they really look like.” He says it in a way that makes him sound like he is bragging. “No questions, please,” Woohyun says quickly, reading Sunggyu’s facial expression, curious as usual.
“Wasn’t going to ask any anyway,” Sunggyu mutters, and slumps onto his bed in exasperation, digging out his PSP from under his pillow.
It had been like this for the past week. The two had been passing each other awkwardly through various intervals of the day: sometimes when Sunggyu woke up for school, Woohyun would be lying on the thin mattress laid out on the floorboards, practically asking to be stepped on. At other times he’d be nowhere to be seen, and on his way out Sunggyu would see him sitting on the roof gazing at the sky with an unreadable expression on his face.
The routine breaks when Sunggyu comes bounding into the room on a Tuesday afternoon with a crumpled piece of paper in his grip.
“There’s this guy in my class who I overheard during lunch time, and I think it’s the perfect opportunity for you to do your thing.”
Woohyun blinks up at him from behind the magazine he’s reading. “My thing? What’s my thing?”
Sunggyu walks up to him and takes the magazine from his grasp, “Your whole angel-saving, wrist band demolishing whatever!” he cries impatiently, waving the paper under Woohyun’s nose.
Woohyun rolls his eyes and takes the sheet from him, reading the messy Hangul with a little bit difficulty because Sunggyu’s handwriting is really that bad.
“Lee Howon?” he asks, tilting his head.
“Yeah, he’s kind of short and likes to dance, he leads the club and um,” he stops. “That’s all I actually know about him.”
Woohyun sits up, “Isn’t he your classmate?” he asks him, tilting his head to the side.
Sunggyu mumbles something, and Woohyun tells him to speak up. Sunggyu swallows uncomfortably, “Doesn’t mean I’m close with him. Anyway, are you going to help him or whatever?” he asks, changing the subject and avoiding Woohyun’s eyes, “He’s part of the dance club, so he’ll be at my school until five thirty.”
After much convincing, Woohyun finally gets his ass off Sunggyu’s bed and the two are on the street, taking step after step up the hill leading towards Sunggyu’s high school.
“You walk this every day?” Woohyun asks, his breath short a bit as they continue.
Sunggyu shakes his head, “I used to ride my bike up a path on the other side,” he says, shooting a look at Woohyun. “But recently I’ve been walking.”
Woohyun nods, “Walking is good for you.”
Sunggyu rolls his eyes, mutters something intelligible, and looks forward at the road. The two walk the remainder of the way in silence, the only sounds being the passing cars and the scraping of their shoes against the pavement. “This is it,” Sunggyu says, stopping in front of an impressive looking building. “We have… forty minutes before they finish,” he says, grimacing.
“Forty?” Woohyun cries, putting his hands on his hips and sighing dramatically. “That’s forty minutes I could have lazed around and did nothing,” he tells him.
“Not like you don’t always do nothing,” Sunggyu bites, and Woohyun opens his mouth in mock offense. “Just sit on a bench or something, my school’s kind of pretty.”
Woohyun takes his advice, sitting on the concrete surrounding a tree, admiring the green grass that was plentiful across the grounds as well as the flowers, full in bloom from the spring that had just passed. The smell of summer is sharp in the air and the sun is still streaming brightly and hot, and even the slight noise of the still-running clubs is refreshing in a way, giving the school a feeling of completeness.
“Woohyun-ah!” calls Sunggyu, and he turns to find the older boy staring at him, a soccer ball held tightly between his hands. “Can you kick?”
He turns out to be a better kicker than Sunggyu had ever imagined. He shoots a clean goal from mid-field with a yell, and is surprisingly talented at tricks, causing Sunggyu to become embarrassed when it’s his turn to show his skills.
“I’ll pass this time,” he says quickly, “I had sport earlier today, so my muscles hurt.”
Woohyun laughs, “You’re weak.” He kicks the ball with a natural ease making it look so simple, before kicking it into the goals. “Let’s put this away,” he says, as he runs to retrieve it. They walk in silence, Woohyun dribbling the ball from foot to foot, occasionally passing it to Sunggyu who would always pass it back the very next step, and never later.
“The gym stays open until clubs finish,” he explains as he puts the ball back with the others. “For clubs to pack up and stuff.” It’s when he turns from the ball room that he notices that Woohyun isn’t listening, but rather looking elsewhere to the mezzanine floor half obscured by curtains.
“There’s someone up there,” he says simply, and he walks towards it without another word. He’s ignoring Sunggyu’s shouts of him to wait, moving from a walk to a jog as he races up the stairs and stops when he gets there.
A lone figure dances, the music loud and fierce as his limbs move in accordance to the beat. It’s amazing, really, the flexibility and fluid movements he makes, each seeming so simple as he pulls each one off with ease. The room reeks of sweat and hard work, and Woohyun feels his throat clench up at the sheer beauty of it. The music fades, and Lee Howon freezes, his limbs locked in position until the very last note.
“Was I good?” he asks as he crouches to the ground, tipping the contents of his water bottle into his mouth as if it were life itself. His breath is haggard and short, beads of sweat drip from his forehead and his neck giving his body a thin sheen of it, a testament to his hard work, but he gives off a refreshing feeling nonetheless. Woohyun nods, and Howon laughs. A bell rings, sending echoes throughout the empty room, one ring, two rings, three rings. “At least I had an audience for my last performance.”
He blinks, “What… What do you mean?”
Howon nods solemnly, “They’ve cut my club. I’m the only member, after all. They said I need four more people for it to be a proper club, but it’s kind of hard to promote when they won’t let me perform eh?” He grabs a towel from his bag, wiping himself dry before crouching gingerly to it, carefully placing his belongings inside and slinging it over his shoulder. “We have to clear out of here now, the bell’s gone.” He sighs as he takes one last look around the room, and places his hand to the window. “I wonder what’ll go on here now. Chess club?” He laughs at the suggestion. His hand moves to the light switch and with one fluid movement flicks it off, and the whole room goes dim. “Let’s go.”
Together, they trudge down the staircase only for Howon to stop just before the last one. “S-Sunggyu?” he says, tilting his head. “It is you.” He pauses. “Why are you here?”
“Oh, hyung!” Woohyun says, and Howon just looks between them confused.
“Who’s he?” he asks Sunggyu, and Sunggyu swallows, saying that Woohyun is his cousin visiting from out of town before he can say something stupid. “I see. He kind of… walked upstairs and saw me dancing and stuff.”
Woohyun nods, “Yeah! hyung, you should join his dance team.”
Sunggyu blinks. “What?”
He continues, “He said that his club got closed down, if you join maybe it’ll stay open.” Sunggyu shoots him a death glare. Had it been anything else, he may have considered. But dancing?
But when he sees the way that Howon’s eyes light up at the suggestion, he holds his tongue for just a moment. “Alright,” he finds himself saying, and no sooner than he says it, he wishes that he could take back his words. “Wait, what?”
Of course, it’s too late, and Woohyun smiles, pulling his arm around Sunggyu’s shoulder. “Good as!” he says. He looks up to Howon and flashes a thumbs up, “So what happens?”
He swallows, “Are you joining too?”
Woohyun’s hesitant for a second, and his eyes flicker to Sunggyu. “Yeah,” he says slowly, “why not? I’m only in town for a while though.”
Howon shrugs, “It’s alright. You’re one more person after all,” he smiles.
They make arrangements to meet the next day on the grass field, as he no longer has rights to use the mezzanine. Sunggyu’s unsure as he and Woohyun make their way home. He admits that the way that Howon’s face lit up earlier and the way that his entire mood brightened was a good feeling, but the fact that he’d just signed himself up to a dance team was just over his head. Woohyun, on the other hand, has no problem whatsoever with the situation.
“Isn’t this great?” he says, bouncing on Sunggyu’s sofa as the older boy searches the fridge for their dinner. “It’s an actual problem. Well, it’s not really a problem, more of a situation, but it’s still something that I can help him with!”
Sunggyu turns from the fridge, “It’s great for you,” he says sharply, before sighing. “I can’t dance for shit.” He grimaces as he remembers sport class the previous year, where in groups they had to perform a dance. His group had been lazy and just done some kind of mashed up rendition of Super Junior’s Sorry Sorry mixed with Hoot, and yet he still managed to screw it up immensely. “I can’t do this, Woohyun.”
The younger frowns as he grabs a plate from the microwave, placing it on the table. “What do you mean?” he asks, sitting down. “You don’t have to be good at it. He just needs people,” Woohyun murmurs, poking at the food with his chopsticks.
Sunggyu swats his hands away as he places the pot of rice in the centre of the table, before pulling up a chair opposite him. “That’s not the point,” he tells him, clinking his chopsticks to the bowl in annoyance. “If we dance like shit, nobody’s going to join the club you know.”
This is a fact that Woohyun hadn’t considered. Technically, he hadn’t considered a lot of things aside from ‘holy shit this is an actual problem and will take me one step closer to being home, let’s do this’. “That’s why you learn, right?”
If there was something that set Woohyun aside from anyone Sunggyu had ever met, it was his naivety when it came to things Sunggyu would deem extremely normal. It’s cute in a way, but after some time it becomes tiresome, which is exactly how he feels at this moment.
“I don’t think I can,” he mumbles into his rice.
Woohyun stares down at his plate. “You really have image issues,” he says quietly. “I’m sure you’ll do fine.”
It’s no surprise that Woohyun is a natural when it comes to dancing, with their first meeting on the warm grassy field proving him no difficulty. Maybe it’s in his heavenly, otherworldly DNA to just succeed at everything he tries to do, but regardless, he’s damn good at it.
“You’re amazing,” Howon says in their break as the three of them chug at their bottles of water. “Are you sure you’ve never danced before?”
Woohyun shakes his head, “Never. I suppose I’m a natural, huh?”
They laugh, and Sunggyu wants to punch them.
Catching his expression, Woohyun shoots a sympathetic look towards Sunggyu. He wasn’t bad, but he wasn’t getting the routine as quickly or as sharply as Woohyun was. “You’re doing alright , hyung, he tells him. He collapses onto the ground and stares into the sky, sighing.
“I hate this.”
Woohyun chuckles and sits beside him. “You hate everything.”
Sunggyu nods at this. “Sounds about right.” They sit in silence, but Sunggyu’s okay with it. And when Sunggyu is okay with things, Woohyun’s okay with them too.
A minute or so later, Howon joins them, and they take a prolonged break from dancing in the heat to have a talk of some sort.
“Where are you from?” he asks Woohyun, and Sunggyu’s eyes quickly dart to him, probably a warning for him to not say anything stupid.
“Jeollabuk-do,” he answers, and Sunggyu stares. “Sunggyu hyung’s from there as well, except he moved. Why he’d move here though is beyond me,” he says, a smirk playing his lips when he sees the shocked look on the elder’s face. He’d never even mentioned his childhood to Woohyun, and he can only stare in shock as Woohyun shamelessly tells it to a guy he’s hardly even talked to.
Howon tilts his head in confusion, “Oh, you’re from Jeollabuk-do?” he asks Sunggyu, “I thought you were from Seoul.” He’s quiet for a moment, “Oh, but you never talk to anyone in class, so I guess that’s normal…”
Silence settles between them, and Sunggyu thinks that if he was to lift out his fingers, he could actually touch the awkward. “I guess there’s nothing to talk about?” he supplies. This is him, Kim Sunggyu, the best at making friends. He laughs at himself in spite.
A cough from Woohyun breaks the tense atmosphere, “Let’s keep going. We’re doing pretty well, right?” he asks Howon, and Howon’s expression brightens considerably.
“We’re doing great. We might be able to perform at next week’s Grind,” he says, and both Woohyun and Sunggyu can hear the want lacing his voice.
“What’s a Grind?”
“Every month, the clubs in our school have a show in the courtyard called the Grind. We pretty much just show off our stuff, whatever it is we do, and try to recruit new members. I suppose it’s our best bet towards gaining new members,” he explains, his arm outstretched as he practices a move.
It makes a lot of sense to Woohyun, for them to be aiming for an event like this. The determination and excitement not only released from Howon, but surprisingly from him as well drives him to continue day after day despite the biting heat, and it’s all his entire mind seems to be geared towards. He spends his time in the park nearby while Sunggyu and Howon are at school, practicing aggressively to his own reflection trapped in the glassy doors of the outlining stores. It’s in this motivation that he begins to lose sight of what’s closest to him, and it’s not until the night before they’re due to perform that it hits him in the face, so to speak.
“Hyung.” Woohyun says, and he grabs Sunggyu’s elbow. “You need to raise it up further. Also, you’re off beat by a second.” He takes his arm and bends it upwards by the slightest degree, and Sunggyu makes a sharp hiss of pain.
“Ow, stop,” Sunggyu tells him, his words catching in his throat. Woohyun shakes his head and pushes Sunggyu’s elbow further backwards. “I said stop, damn it!”
Sunggyu regrets it a second after it happens. His mouth turns dry as he retracts his fist, and Woohyun stumbles back against the wall, his hand raised to his cheek as he winces in pain. He wipes his mouth, and his eyes widen in alarm as a small trickle of blood seeps from his lip, burst from Sunggyu’s punch. “Fuck, hyung, what the fuck was that for?”
He opens his mouth, but what could he say in his defence? ‘Fuck, I’m sorry Woohyun, I’m sorry that you’re correcting my mistakes which is something you’re supposed to do as we only have a few more hours left’? Maybe ‘I’m sorry for hitting you, I wasn’t thinking’, or even just an apology of the simplest sort would be suffice, but instead he takes a jab at Woohyun’s pride while simultaneously blaming it on him, and he hates every moment of it.
“What, so because you’ve been practising all this time while I’ve been busy, while Howon’s been busy, you’re suddenly the best at this right? Now you can just correct every little mistake that I make, that you’re your duty to point out what’s wrong with every single step?” His words don’t even make sense, but he’s just so fucking angry at everything in this moment that he doesn’t stop to think about what he’s saying.
“Did I do something wrong?” Woohyun asks, and his tone is dead serious. “Look, whatever I did, I’m sorry, okay?”
Sunggyu glares at him. “Lee Howon’s this, Lee Howon’s that. Practice more, hyung! Don’t forget to practice! How long have you practiced for?” He shakes his head and closes his eyes, “Forget it. Practice until you die, for all I care,” he says, and proceeds to tip Woohyun’s belongings from their duffle bag, stalking back home.
One minute after his outburst, Kim Sunggyu feels like shit. Of course, he felt fucking amazing while he was yelling at Woohyun, since he’d been nothing but fucking irritating for the past six days, but his knuckles sting from where he’d punched him and there’s a feeling inside him that perhaps he’d been the one who suffered more from their argument. He feels empty as he turns quietly, the street barren. What, did he expect Woohyun to have followed him back? He isn’t even sure what he’s expecting.
Sitting under the lamplight of the street, Sunggyu counts the cars that pass by in however many minutes he spends on the curb next to a convenience store. He reaches into his bag and pulls out his phone, his battery low and the screen blinking 10:03PM. It’s late, but not late enough. Rolling his eyes, he grabs his back and trudges his way back home, taking extra care to extend every step and even takes the longest route back he can manage. He stands in front of his house, his keys in hand as he stands at the doorstep.
He’s half expecting Woohyun to be there waiting for him, but of course, he’s not. Not even when Sunggyu goes inside, locks the door and sits on the edge of his bed can he hear the stupid chatter of him, and somewhere along the way he begins to miss it.
It’s only the next morning, when Sunggyu is awoken by the sound of his phone beeping, vibrations rattling his bedside drawer, that he realizes he really misses Woohyun. He wouldn’t describe the feeling as missing him really, since he’s still pissed off at him and his overall stupidity, but it’s something too damn close.
이호원: Are you ready?
He sinks back into his bed. Any other day he’d have been fine with the grind, even if he did hate the whole dancing aspect of it. But at that moment he felt like shit, and he knew he would even more so should he happen to see Nam Woohyun’s face, which he was sure to do.
A second text rattles the stand, and he reluctantly shifts himself out of his bed and onto the floor - landing on the mattress usually occupied by Woohyun, just beside his bed and barely six centimetres off the floor. Closing his eyes, he wills for that stupid guy to leave his mind already, because he’s clogging up his thoughts and distracting him from what’s more important; finding something that would somewhat fit the theme Howon had set for them. Some time along him sifting through his closet for his jeans, the thought of Woohyun finding clothes crosses his mind.
“Fuck him,” he murmurs, “he can do everything himself anyway, right?”
He packs a spare set of clothes.
“Sunggyu!” Howon calls, and he waves his arm from across the field. Sunggyu jogs over to him, his black bag hitting the back of his legs as he runs and he’s more than glad when he reaches his destination to promptly dump it on the floor. “Good to see you,” he smiles.
He returns the smile, albeit awkwardly, “I’m nervous,” he tells him, laughing slightly. His expression’s cut short when Woohyun appears by Howon’s side, looking cheerful as ever and all dressed up ready to go. What makes it worse is the sweet yet cruel smile poised on his face, as if butter couldn’t melt in his mouth.
Howon smiles weakly, “Yeah, we’re all feeling the nerves. Woohyun couldn’t sleep the whole night,” he smirks, giving him a light shove on the shoulder. “Kept whining about stuffing something up.”
Sunggyu blinks, “Wait, you were with him last night?”
“You mean you didn’t know? I thought he’s staying with you?” Howon asks, stepping back slightly to look at the two of them, watching as the tension between the two rises sure and steady.
He shrugs, “Well obviously he wasn’t last night.”
Howon nods slowly, “Um, yeah. Hang on a sec, I just have to confirm our sport in the Grind,” he says, excusing himself and heading off. Sunggyu knows that it’s just some sort of excuse to make him and Woohyun talk out whatever the hell they were going through, but he’s stupid enough to follow through with it.
Behind his back, he’s running his fingers along his knuckles, as if he could still feel the blow from the previous night like it was seconds ago. There’s nothing showing on Woohyun’s face that would suggest that anything had happened to him - his healing speed is no joke.
He takes a step forward, “Sunggyu hyung,” he says quietly. There’s no anger in his voice, no annoyance, no nothing. It’s blank and clear, and Sunggyu doesn’t know what to think. “I’m sorry I didn’t go back to your place last night, but I figured you were angry at me so…” he looks down at the black shirt and jeans he’s wearing, and he closes his fingers around the hem. “Howon’s the only other person I know aside from you, so I’m sorry if I made you worry.”
Sunggyu almost laughs. “Worry? You think I worried about you?” He shakes his head. “Who do you think you are?” He closes his eyes and sighs, before turning and walking away, his body moving forward and his heart moving back, and it’s the worst he’s felt in days.
Woohyun closes his eyes and sits on the grass, a pout fitting his lips as he stretches on the lawn. Not that he would openly admit it, but Sunggyu’s words hurt him a lot. His fingers scout around him, pulling at the grass and making holes in the dirt when his eyes rest on the black bag just a few metres from him. “Sunggyu hyung’s bag?” he says, and he crawls towards it, zipping it open without a second thought. Sunggyu was already pissed off at him, and he doubted it could get any worse regardless.
Towel. Drink bottle. Wallet. How boring, he thinks, opening a cloth bag wedged in the side.
“..Wh..” his mouth hangs open as he pulls out a pair of jeans and a neatly folded t-shirt, and his forehead creases with thought. Their routine wasn’t ridiculously long, so he doubted that they were spare clothes. Lending them to someone? It was something that went unsaid, but he knew that Sunggyu had no friends.
Aside from Woohyun, that is, because he definitely considers them as friends, even if the older didn’t.
“I’m sure you didn’t worry about me, hyung."
“I don’t get how you’re not nervous,” Howon says, elbowing Woohyun in the shoulder.
Woohyun laughs and pats Howon on the back, assuring him that he’ll do fine. “You’ll do great,” he says, “you’re amazing.”
Sunggyu is stuck third wheeling their happy conversation with a strange urge to slap them both, or at least shove earplugs in his ears. It’s not that he’s jealous of Howon, but more that he feels like he’s nothing more than an accessory to their routine. After all, Woohyun and Howon are obviously the stars of the show, and Sunggyu in the back doing his thing, whatever that is. Performance aside, he can see the smile on Woohyun’s lips every time Howon makes him laugh, the sparks in his eyes that bring his face to life when they talk and the raw feeling of familiarity mixed with friendship they seem to exude after a mere week of knowing each other.
He’s jealous of Howon.
The groups of students burst into applause, and Howon stops his talking mid-sentence to take a deep breath. “It’s us, guys,” he says, his voice small and eyes wild. To tell the truth, Sunggyu has never seen Howon this scared before. In class he’s the quiet boy with a hidden fearlessness, a charm never shy of keeping the girls on edge. Yet in front of him, he’s so normal, excitement and fear running through him, sending adrenaline through his veins as he breaks into a normal Howon smile. “Let’s do this.”
“The next group performing will be our very own dance club,” the MC, a tall and neat-looking senior announced as he pointed the microphone in the direction of Sunggyu, Woohyun and Howon. Some people cheer. Some people clap, but the crowd is noticeably softer than they had been for other performances. Sunggyu hears a mix of yells including, ‘We have a dance club?’ and ‘Who’s that guy? The one on the end?’ (Of course, it was Woohyun). Sunggyu is wearing a black face mask, since he knows that he’s going to screw it up, and hey, it’s better to stuff it up anonymously, right?
He faces the crowd, not immensely huge or anything, but still bigger than what he’s used to facing for presentations and stuff. He’s almost glad that his hair had grown out pretty long recently, as it almost (not really) blocks out the faces of the onlookers. His heart is beating a million per second, and for a moment he lets his mind wander.
The familiar beat of the song starts, the first note spurring recognition in his mind and his body moves automatically in rhythm, each movement coming naturally to him. Each step, each swing and dip of the head is set in motion, the three of them dancing uniformly to the watching crowd, and Sunggyu thinks for a moment that he’s doing alright.
When Sunggyu makes his first mistake, it’s subtle but noticeable, and he closes his eyes as people point in his direction, leaning into their friends to whisper and laugh at his slip up. The second time, it’s not as bad, and he’s able to continue without it even looking like he stuffed up. But the third time he stuffs up, he knows he’s fucked. After all, you can’t dance if you don’t remember the moves.
So when he stands there, looking utterly confused and lost, he’s glad for his mask. At least this way, nobody will point at him when he walks in the corridors, or sits in the library reading. His eyes are closed as he waits for the next part of the song, but frowns when there’s no talking, no laughing, and he opens his eyes just a little to look at the audience.
Nobody is laughing, nobody is pointing, it’s just a sea of people captivated by their performance, and it’s beautiful. He turns his head to the side, and Woohyun shoots him a smile, his hands by his side and unmoving, just like the rest of him.
Realization clicks inside of Sunggyu. The song ends with thunderous applause, and cheering that causes him to wince and cover his right ear. A smile ripples through him, turning the corners of his mouth upwards, and he leaps towards Woohyun in a fluid movement, pulling him into a hug. He buries his head in the younger’s shoulder, feeling his hair tickle him as he holds him tightly.
“Thank you,” he says, soft enough for just him to hear. They pull apart, and Sunggyu stares at him, still smiling slightly. “Why did you do that? I’ve been such a bitch to you,” his eyes fall on the last sentence, “I’m sorry.”
Woohyun smiles at him. “I’m an angel,” he replies, “I save people.”
Sunggyu makes a face. “That was lame. Really, why did you do it?”
His eyes fall slightly, “I found your bag,” he murmurs, shrugging his shoulder, and Sunggyu’s ears tint pink. “You’re a thoughtful person, hyung.”
They stand together, bowing awkwardly in front of the audience, stupid smiles plastered on their faces as they walk off the stage together.
“You guys were great!” Howon yells at them, giving the two of them a slap to the back. Sunggyu scoffs, telling him that he was the main act (which is true, because both he and Woohyun had been stationary for a good thirty seconds, meaning Howon was having a solo show by himself). He laughs, and Woohyun swears that his cheeks turned red, even if it was for just a second.
“Do you think your club is going to start back up again?” Woohyun asks him.
He beams, “Actually, I’ve had about seven people already ask me,” he laughs lightly. “I really don’t know what I can do to show my appreciation for all your effort, I mean… just thank you so much.”
A light catches Woohyun’s eyes, and he turns his gaze to his wrist where a single bracelet lightens from slate to grey, and from grey to a white so pure it’s almost glowing. He clamps his hand, and raises his eyes from his arm. He takes a quick glance at Sunggyu, but Sunggyu’s staring at his wrist, his eyes wide. Their gazes meet, and Woohyun flashes him a quick grin.
“You’re welcome,” he says, “honestly, it was a lot of fun.” He looks back to Sunggyu, and a wicked grin graces his features. “Even managed to get Gyu hyung here a friend,” he adds, and Sunggyu splutters in shock.
“Y-You-I,” his eyes dart between both Woohyun and Howon, the former bent over with laughter, but the former laughing as well.
Howon opens his mouth, “Sunggyu, you should talk to more people. You’re not even bad, honestly. We’re always wondering what we have to do to get you to talk.”
Sunggyu looks at the floor. “I…” he stops, because he has nothing to say.
“Well, talk to me at least, okay?” Howon asks, and Sunggyu gives him a smile.
“Alright.”
2/2