[fic] brother-in-law. joon/thunder
Author: sesame_seed
Genre: General
Character(s)/Pairing(s): Joon/Thunder-ish
Rating: PG
Set after the Weekly Idol interview on 2/10/12 (Youtube link), where Joon ends up undisputed champion of the 'How Well Do You Know Sandara Park?' competition:
Brother-in-law
They're still in high spirits while leaving the set: chuckles, flailing arms, an occasional unpremeditated elbow jab.
"Joonie-hyung, are you stalking my sister?" Cheondoong demands as they head towards the exit behind Hyungseob-hyung. He's trying for a stern face, but Cheondoong will never make an actor: his lips keep tipping upwards, uncontrollably, and Joon feels something inside him relax as well, a welcome release of tension after the control necessary for the camera.
"Well, clearly some guy should be paying attention to her, when even her little brother doesn't care enough to -- "
The rest of his words are trapped. Cheondoong clasps a hand over his mouth, wrestling him into a headlock. The grip is loose, easily broken -- even when they're horsing around, Cheondoong always holds back, and Joon's never been sure whether it's out of respect of his elders and concern over the maknae, or if he is just that peacable by nature -- but Joon leans into it, feeling his grin stretching out against Cheondoong's fingers.
"Come on, come on," says Hyungseob-hyung, bracing the door open and pushing them out with half his attention on the phone propped between his ear and shoulder. "Yes, we're heading out, we'll be there in twenty minutes at most -- yes, they'll be presentable and ready to start immediately -- "
"Man, I could totally use some dinner right now," says Mir. He rolls his head around, cracks his shoulders.
"You could totally use a diet right now," says G.O. disapprovingly, though Joon knows he doesn't really mean it. They joke about their fluctuating weights on camera, about Seungho's stomach, Cheondoong's cheeks, but really, if Mir gets any flatter he'll disappear sideways, and nobody wants to be down a member at crunch time.
"Come on, just one more show for the day and we're done." Seungho looks calm and leaderly as he says this. Joon bets that what he's actually thinking is, Mmm, dinner...steak, noodles, maybe some banchan and soup....
By this point Cheondoong has pushed Joon away completely, and he's just following the rest of them towards the van with his head down and a smile still lingering, as if he's thinking of something pleasant.
***
The following schedule is brutal, but it's nothing to which they're unaccustomed, and they've all evolved ways to endure.
Joon sleeps, and sleeps, and sleeps. He sleeps during every spare moment until it's hard to tell the days apart, until G.O. complains that he misses Joon because they never actually see each other anymore.
Seungho powers through it. The circles under his eyes darken, his body grows more tense, and he doesn't smile much once the cameras flick off, as if he's conserving every bit of energy and can't spare enough to twitch his facial muscles. He becomes even more ruthlessly exacting of his own undertakings. He never takes it out on others, though: he's strict as usual when it comes to their efforts and performances, but not an iota more or less. He's a good leader, Joon understands. There is nobody he pushes harder than himself.
G.O. is the best at dealing; he slips on his headphones as soon as they're on the van, rolls his shoulders, tilts back his head. Joon sometimes thinks he can see the tension leeching out, and he has no idea how G.O. does it, most likely because G.O. is utter crap at explaining.
"Just let it flow -- like a waterfall, you know?" he says, making a gesture with his arms that looks like he's imitating a demented octopus, smacking Mir on the head at the end of a rotation; Mir turns a baleful death glare on them both and hunches more deeply into his own corner of the vehicle.
Mir is the absolute worst. He goes into sullen fits, flashes of temper when he'll simmer or snap at the slightest provocation, like when he'd been sidelined by injury during the entire filming of Sesame Player, like when the first week numbers for their last album had come out, the one they'd broken their backs to promote, and the results remained underwhelming. Seungho will smack him down for it occasionally, but usually, he takes it in stride like the rest of them -- Mir is still a kid in some ways, and it's amazing and wonderful that that's even possible.
None of them want to break him out of it, especially since they can see how easily it's happening already.
(Mir locked himself in his room the day after the third Hello Baby episode aired and half the comments were variations on the theme of how cruel he was, how thoughtless, how immature. Seungho knocked and was ignored; G.O. tried to console him through the door and met with stony silence; Cheondoong cast worried looks towards Mir's room whenever he passed it in the hallway. Finally, Joon ordered barbecue and fanned the smell of the meat through the crack under Mir's door.
Mir emerged thirty seconds later, and cracked up when he saw Joon crouched in front of his doorsill with a hand fan. It made Joon laugh, too.)
Sometimes, though, Joon thinks he prefers Mir's dark moods to what Cheondoong does, which is -- nothing. When Cheondoong gets tired, he compensates by blanking out at random times; he'll be staring straight ahead, and not even blink when Joon waves a hand in front of his face. It happens even on camera: Joon will turn his head and see Cheondoong gazing out into the crowd, solemn, like a brooding mannequin.
It's worse when they're back at the dorm, where he and Cheondoong share a room, and he'll find Cheondoong just slumped against the wall with his feet stretched out across the futon, staring at the TV and seeing something on another plane of existence, or maybe seeing nothing at all.
He's always had a bit of a soft spot for Cheondoong, probably a relic from their rookie days when the kid had seemed bewildered by the pace at which events moved in in the idol world and completely out of his depth, trying hard at practices and rehearsals and, in the end, not hard enough.
So even though he's exhausted, even though it's hard to maintain balance and he is yearning for his pillow like a hooked fish for the sea, at these times he'll stop and let himself be loud and impossible to ignore, until Cheondoong looks at him and lets out a huff of laughter, becomes animated and alive if only for a short while.
Then he can sleep.
***
The fan meeting goes well -- Jiyoon-hyung praises them, afterwards, tells them they've far exceeded expectations -- but Joon is so dog-tired at the end of the day that, when they pack up to go home, he can barely climb into his usual seat by the door.
Mir is pepped up on the post-show buzz to such an extent that there's no risk of dark clouds, and Seungho doesn't hush him, even though their leader looks like he's one pin drop away from falling over. He even chuckles a little at Mir and G.O. bickering over the relative fervor of their fans:
"I had more signs! There were at least thirty -- there were at least fifty!"
"But mine were better. Bigger! Quality over quantity! And my fans had stronger lungs!"
Any other day, Joon would join in -- his fans are the absolute best -- but he's busy with a mouth-splitting yawn. He's had almost twice as many programs as the rest of the group lately, and on the one hand it's good because, hey, popularity, but on the other, he feels like a shoddily reanimated corpse. Adrenaline had kept him going during the meeting; now comes the crash.
He closes his eyes for just one second, and then Cheondoong is shaking him insistently on the right, Seungho poking at him from the left. The motor's no longer rumbling.
"Dude, bed's inside. Come on, you can sleep all you like upstairs."
His eyelids don't want to move. "Go'way."
"Hey." Another push from Cheondoong, gentle. "I'll introduce you to my sister if you get up now."
That pierces through the fog in his brain; he turns his head and cracks his eyes open, though it's impossible to see anything through the darkness and sleep-haze. "Seriously?"
"Pinky-swear."
"Hey, hey, how come I don't get to be introduced to Sandara-sshi for getting up?"
"I've got to protect my sister," Cheondoong says, and Joon's shaken off the nap enough to see that he's managed to keep his face absolutely straight.
"And introducing her to Joon is the way to do that?"
"I object," Joon grouches as he stumbles his way off the van, Cheondoong following behind. "I'm a perfect gentleman."
"You are," Cheondoong affirms against Seungho's fit of laughter, even though it sounds like there's a smile hidden in there, too. "Well-mannered. Elegant."
"A fucking courtier, and don't you forget it."
***
He doesn't remember that little exchange until the next day, when the TV's going and Sandara Park's latest Etude CF comes on (she's starting to show her age just the tiniest bit, he thinks -- not that she isn't still lovely, but there's a new hardness about her face that he associates with the onset of years, though that might just be the pancake makeup), and his mind helpfully replays the conversation.
He finds himself smiling a little when he thinks about it. It's -- sweet. Cheondoong doesn't like to bring up his sister, not in public, not in private. Too many instances of being introduced as Dara of 2NE1's younger brother, of being dismissed, of being valued not for himself but for his association to another.
Joon can understand that; he wonders if it's better or worse to be valued not for oneself, but for a false perception of oneself. They're both pretty bad, he decides in the end.
It makes Cheondoong's offer something of a novelty, though, special even if it had been a joke, so when Cheondoong stumbles into the room, rummaging through the knot of belts on the dresser and muttering something about pants made for elephants, Joon greets him with what he knows is a huge, slightly idiotic grin.
Cheondoong squints down at him warily. "What's up?"
"Morning, brother-in-law." It would take an effort to keep his grin from slipping into a smirk, so he doesn't even try.
Cheondoong sighs in a way that probably means something along the lines of man, that escaped mental patient Joonie-hyung. "You do know she'll probably just run away screaming? My sister's standards are very high."
"But you think I meet them or you wouldn't even introduce us, right? Right?" He leans over to poke Cheondoong in the belly, and feels proud at the full-body twitch.
"Whatever you say, hyung."
Joon basks in the glow a little while longer as Cheondoong sorts through seven different belts and finally settles on a silver chain-link.
He's just about to leave the room again when Joon says, "Hey."
"Do you want me to bring you some breakfast?"
"No -- well, actually, do that; definitely do that. But there was something else."
"Mmm?" Cheondoong pauses in the doorway, expectant, and Joon tries to find a way to put what he wants to express without sounding like a total dork.
"You don't have to introduce me to your sister," he says awkwardly -- and then, when Cheondoong's eyebrows lift in disbelief, growls, "Shut up!"
"I didn't say anything." Joon suspects that You crazy person is swallowed by proper dongsaeng respect.
"What I was going to say -- I mean, well. What I was going to say..." he trails off again.
"It's okay if you're not really awake yet," Cheondoong tells him pityingly. "We don't have anything until evening. You can go back to sleep."
He makes himself spit the whole thing out before it gets swallowed again. "Well, the thing is. I'm pretty satisfied with the Park sibling I already know."
There's a silence of fifteen seconds (Joon is counting) as Cheondoong just blinks at him, expressionless. It's unsettling, to say the least, but just as Joon's thinking that, yeah, that was a bad idea, Cheondoong blossoms out into that tiny, secretive smile that transforms his rather plain and solemn face into something completely charming.
"You definitely meet my sister's standards, Joonie-hyung -- and mine for her, which are even higher," he says, and just as Joon's swelling up with surprise and satisfaction, he adds, "but I don't want to introduce you to her at all."
***
Afterwards -- after the door has shut and Joon can hear the sound of Cheondoong's slippers padding off down the hallway, presumably towards the kitchen to procure something in the way of breakfast -- Joon realizes that that had been a compliment, too.
End
Genre: General
Character(s)/Pairing(s): Joon/Thunder-ish
Rating: PG
Set after the Weekly Idol interview on 2/10/12 (Youtube link), where Joon ends up undisputed champion of the 'How Well Do You Know Sandara Park?' competition:
Brother-in-law
They're still in high spirits while leaving the set: chuckles, flailing arms, an occasional unpremeditated elbow jab.
"Joonie-hyung, are you stalking my sister?" Cheondoong demands as they head towards the exit behind Hyungseob-hyung. He's trying for a stern face, but Cheondoong will never make an actor: his lips keep tipping upwards, uncontrollably, and Joon feels something inside him relax as well, a welcome release of tension after the control necessary for the camera.
"Well, clearly some guy should be paying attention to her, when even her little brother doesn't care enough to -- "
The rest of his words are trapped. Cheondoong clasps a hand over his mouth, wrestling him into a headlock. The grip is loose, easily broken -- even when they're horsing around, Cheondoong always holds back, and Joon's never been sure whether it's out of respect of his elders and concern over the maknae, or if he is just that peacable by nature -- but Joon leans into it, feeling his grin stretching out against Cheondoong's fingers.
"Come on, come on," says Hyungseob-hyung, bracing the door open and pushing them out with half his attention on the phone propped between his ear and shoulder. "Yes, we're heading out, we'll be there in twenty minutes at most -- yes, they'll be presentable and ready to start immediately -- "
"Man, I could totally use some dinner right now," says Mir. He rolls his head around, cracks his shoulders.
"You could totally use a diet right now," says G.O. disapprovingly, though Joon knows he doesn't really mean it. They joke about their fluctuating weights on camera, about Seungho's stomach, Cheondoong's cheeks, but really, if Mir gets any flatter he'll disappear sideways, and nobody wants to be down a member at crunch time.
"Come on, just one more show for the day and we're done." Seungho looks calm and leaderly as he says this. Joon bets that what he's actually thinking is, Mmm, dinner...steak, noodles, maybe some banchan and soup....
By this point Cheondoong has pushed Joon away completely, and he's just following the rest of them towards the van with his head down and a smile still lingering, as if he's thinking of something pleasant.
***
The following schedule is brutal, but it's nothing to which they're unaccustomed, and they've all evolved ways to endure.
Joon sleeps, and sleeps, and sleeps. He sleeps during every spare moment until it's hard to tell the days apart, until G.O. complains that he misses Joon because they never actually see each other anymore.
Seungho powers through it. The circles under his eyes darken, his body grows more tense, and he doesn't smile much once the cameras flick off, as if he's conserving every bit of energy and can't spare enough to twitch his facial muscles. He becomes even more ruthlessly exacting of his own undertakings. He never takes it out on others, though: he's strict as usual when it comes to their efforts and performances, but not an iota more or less. He's a good leader, Joon understands. There is nobody he pushes harder than himself.
G.O. is the best at dealing; he slips on his headphones as soon as they're on the van, rolls his shoulders, tilts back his head. Joon sometimes thinks he can see the tension leeching out, and he has no idea how G.O. does it, most likely because G.O. is utter crap at explaining.
"Just let it flow -- like a waterfall, you know?" he says, making a gesture with his arms that looks like he's imitating a demented octopus, smacking Mir on the head at the end of a rotation; Mir turns a baleful death glare on them both and hunches more deeply into his own corner of the vehicle.
Mir is the absolute worst. He goes into sullen fits, flashes of temper when he'll simmer or snap at the slightest provocation, like when he'd been sidelined by injury during the entire filming of Sesame Player, like when the first week numbers for their last album had come out, the one they'd broken their backs to promote, and the results remained underwhelming. Seungho will smack him down for it occasionally, but usually, he takes it in stride like the rest of them -- Mir is still a kid in some ways, and it's amazing and wonderful that that's even possible.
None of them want to break him out of it, especially since they can see how easily it's happening already.
(Mir locked himself in his room the day after the third Hello Baby episode aired and half the comments were variations on the theme of how cruel he was, how thoughtless, how immature. Seungho knocked and was ignored; G.O. tried to console him through the door and met with stony silence; Cheondoong cast worried looks towards Mir's room whenever he passed it in the hallway. Finally, Joon ordered barbecue and fanned the smell of the meat through the crack under Mir's door.
Mir emerged thirty seconds later, and cracked up when he saw Joon crouched in front of his doorsill with a hand fan. It made Joon laugh, too.)
Sometimes, though, Joon thinks he prefers Mir's dark moods to what Cheondoong does, which is -- nothing. When Cheondoong gets tired, he compensates by blanking out at random times; he'll be staring straight ahead, and not even blink when Joon waves a hand in front of his face. It happens even on camera: Joon will turn his head and see Cheondoong gazing out into the crowd, solemn, like a brooding mannequin.
It's worse when they're back at the dorm, where he and Cheondoong share a room, and he'll find Cheondoong just slumped against the wall with his feet stretched out across the futon, staring at the TV and seeing something on another plane of existence, or maybe seeing nothing at all.
He's always had a bit of a soft spot for Cheondoong, probably a relic from their rookie days when the kid had seemed bewildered by the pace at which events moved in in the idol world and completely out of his depth, trying hard at practices and rehearsals and, in the end, not hard enough.
So even though he's exhausted, even though it's hard to maintain balance and he is yearning for his pillow like a hooked fish for the sea, at these times he'll stop and let himself be loud and impossible to ignore, until Cheondoong looks at him and lets out a huff of laughter, becomes animated and alive if only for a short while.
Then he can sleep.
***
The fan meeting goes well -- Jiyoon-hyung praises them, afterwards, tells them they've far exceeded expectations -- but Joon is so dog-tired at the end of the day that, when they pack up to go home, he can barely climb into his usual seat by the door.
Mir is pepped up on the post-show buzz to such an extent that there's no risk of dark clouds, and Seungho doesn't hush him, even though their leader looks like he's one pin drop away from falling over. He even chuckles a little at Mir and G.O. bickering over the relative fervor of their fans:
"I had more signs! There were at least thirty -- there were at least fifty!"
"But mine were better. Bigger! Quality over quantity! And my fans had stronger lungs!"
Any other day, Joon would join in -- his fans are the absolute best -- but he's busy with a mouth-splitting yawn. He's had almost twice as many programs as the rest of the group lately, and on the one hand it's good because, hey, popularity, but on the other, he feels like a shoddily reanimated corpse. Adrenaline had kept him going during the meeting; now comes the crash.
He closes his eyes for just one second, and then Cheondoong is shaking him insistently on the right, Seungho poking at him from the left. The motor's no longer rumbling.
"Dude, bed's inside. Come on, you can sleep all you like upstairs."
His eyelids don't want to move. "Go'way."
"Hey." Another push from Cheondoong, gentle. "I'll introduce you to my sister if you get up now."
That pierces through the fog in his brain; he turns his head and cracks his eyes open, though it's impossible to see anything through the darkness and sleep-haze. "Seriously?"
"Pinky-swear."
"Hey, hey, how come I don't get to be introduced to Sandara-sshi for getting up?"
"I've got to protect my sister," Cheondoong says, and Joon's shaken off the nap enough to see that he's managed to keep his face absolutely straight.
"And introducing her to Joon is the way to do that?"
"I object," Joon grouches as he stumbles his way off the van, Cheondoong following behind. "I'm a perfect gentleman."
"You are," Cheondoong affirms against Seungho's fit of laughter, even though it sounds like there's a smile hidden in there, too. "Well-mannered. Elegant."
"A fucking courtier, and don't you forget it."
***
He doesn't remember that little exchange until the next day, when the TV's going and Sandara Park's latest Etude CF comes on (she's starting to show her age just the tiniest bit, he thinks -- not that she isn't still lovely, but there's a new hardness about her face that he associates with the onset of years, though that might just be the pancake makeup), and his mind helpfully replays the conversation.
He finds himself smiling a little when he thinks about it. It's -- sweet. Cheondoong doesn't like to bring up his sister, not in public, not in private. Too many instances of being introduced as Dara of 2NE1's younger brother, of being dismissed, of being valued not for himself but for his association to another.
Joon can understand that; he wonders if it's better or worse to be valued not for oneself, but for a false perception of oneself. They're both pretty bad, he decides in the end.
It makes Cheondoong's offer something of a novelty, though, special even if it had been a joke, so when Cheondoong stumbles into the room, rummaging through the knot of belts on the dresser and muttering something about pants made for elephants, Joon greets him with what he knows is a huge, slightly idiotic grin.
Cheondoong squints down at him warily. "What's up?"
"Morning, brother-in-law." It would take an effort to keep his grin from slipping into a smirk, so he doesn't even try.
Cheondoong sighs in a way that probably means something along the lines of man, that escaped mental patient Joonie-hyung. "You do know she'll probably just run away screaming? My sister's standards are very high."
"But you think I meet them or you wouldn't even introduce us, right? Right?" He leans over to poke Cheondoong in the belly, and feels proud at the full-body twitch.
"Whatever you say, hyung."
Joon basks in the glow a little while longer as Cheondoong sorts through seven different belts and finally settles on a silver chain-link.
He's just about to leave the room again when Joon says, "Hey."
"Do you want me to bring you some breakfast?"
"No -- well, actually, do that; definitely do that. But there was something else."
"Mmm?" Cheondoong pauses in the doorway, expectant, and Joon tries to find a way to put what he wants to express without sounding like a total dork.
"You don't have to introduce me to your sister," he says awkwardly -- and then, when Cheondoong's eyebrows lift in disbelief, growls, "Shut up!"
"I didn't say anything." Joon suspects that You crazy person is swallowed by proper dongsaeng respect.
"What I was going to say -- I mean, well. What I was going to say..." he trails off again.
"It's okay if you're not really awake yet," Cheondoong tells him pityingly. "We don't have anything until evening. You can go back to sleep."
He makes himself spit the whole thing out before it gets swallowed again. "Well, the thing is. I'm pretty satisfied with the Park sibling I already know."
There's a silence of fifteen seconds (Joon is counting) as Cheondoong just blinks at him, expressionless. It's unsettling, to say the least, but just as Joon's thinking that, yeah, that was a bad idea, Cheondoong blossoms out into that tiny, secretive smile that transforms his rather plain and solemn face into something completely charming.
"You definitely meet my sister's standards, Joonie-hyung -- and mine for her, which are even higher," he says, and just as Joon's swelling up with surprise and satisfaction, he adds, "but I don't want to introduce you to her at all."
***
Afterwards -- after the door has shut and Joon can hear the sound of Cheondoong's slippers padding off down the hallway, presumably towards the kitchen to procure something in the way of breakfast -- Joon realizes that that had been a compliment, too.
End