[ vixx ] entropy
title: entropy
pairings: wonsik/hongbin (rabin)
rating: pg-13
summary: It’s clear to anyone who spends more than an hour around the two that Wonsik is in love with Hongbin beyond belief. Both of them are known as ‘the demolitions experts’, C4 more at home in their hands than anything -- even each other, at times.
length: ~4.4k
warnings: gang violence, explosions
a/n: i wrote this like a month ago and posted to ao3 but only just remembered to post it here oopsie. part of gta!au
It’s clear to anyone who spends more than an hour around the two that Wonsik is in love with Hongbin beyond belief. Both of them are known as ‘the demolitions experts’, C4 more at home in their hands than anything -- even each other, at times.
Wonsik treats his explosives like spectacles, every munition and every trigger set down and aligned perfectly -- he argues sometimes with Hongbin over it, says that everything has to be just how he wants it, that yes, that 45 degree angle turn has to be exact in order for the destruction to be as beautiful as he wants. (He’ll never admit it, but they all know that the beauty is only to impress Hongbin himself, to see that sparkle in his eyes that nothing else can bring, to see the flames dance across his skin, to get that crooked grin wormed out of him that Wonsik loves so dearly.)
He throws off a myriad of explosives with timed triggers and paced out pulls to make sure everything is just how he wants it, just how he knows Hongbin likes it to be, eyes never truly on his work and mostly gravitating in towards Hongbin himself.
He may deal with dynamite like a tool for what he wants, but to Hongbin, it’s an extra limb.
He’s so much less of a perfectionist and it’s what keeps Wonsik breathless, coming back for more, craving, his carnage so haphazard yet still so put together. He tosses bombs and pulls detonators like they’re nothing, the split second decision of when to press the button seemingly second nature and the grin as he watches so large it’s a surprise his mouth doesn’t split his whole face in two.
Hongbin is an enigma that fascinates him to the ends of the earth. At this point there’s barely any moments left in his life Wonsik can think upon fondly that don’t include the other, there isn’t anyone he can possibly think of that he’d rather spend time with, there’s a complete and utter lack of attraction to anyone but the younger.
And it stings, sometimes, because he knows it’s not exactly the same both ways. Hongbin looks at fire and Hongbin looks at light and Hongbin looks at smoke and he’s full of awe and wonder but when he looks at Wonsik there’s not even close to as much admiration on his face and Wonsik despises himself for it. He thinks it’s his fault, sometimes, that he’s not abrasive enough, not explosive enough in nature to reign in his crewmate.
They’d arrived together on Hakyeon’s doorstep (--literally on his doorstep, his front porch, half collapsed against the frame of the door itself), Hongbin less trapped beneath Wonsik’s arm than he was clinging to it for his life. They’d done jobs together with the trio before, small bouts of demolition that they couldn’t manage on their own, and Wonsik didn’t know where else to turn, cuffs and collar dripping with blood and ears filled with nothing but Hongbin’s stuttered breathing, sirens and lights and all the chaos and gunfire around them nothing but background noise.
He remembers having to be physically pulled out of the room by Sanghyuk so that his own wounds could be checked, remembers feeling numb to anything but the fear running deep into his bones, the fear that he was going to be the only one to make it. He remembers staying at Hongbin’s bedside for days until he fully recovered, goofing off when they were both awake and holding hands when only he was still conscious, remembers kissing Hongbin’s hand when he was sure no one would hear or see and praying to a God he didn’t believe in that everything would end up okay.
Sometimes the others ask him what, exactly, brought them together, but at this point even Wonsik doesn’t even fully recall. He remembers home, he remembers his family, and he remembers the playground of his childhood, but nothing stands out further than the tiny bright eyes, the little filthy hands, the smile of the boy in the alleyway who led him away from his perfect nuclear life and to where he is now.
He hadn’t really ever planned out the rest of his years beyond what his parents had told him they wanted him to do -- Hongbin brought possibilities and Hongbin brought excitement and Hongbin brought a thrill beyond the dreary textbooks and lectures he was forced to sit through every day and really, Wonsik didn’t have a sliver of a chance when it came to resisting his charm. He didn’t give it a second thought, when the younger asked him to leave, packing his things in the dead of the night and slipping from the warmth of his room at home for the last time without any protest whatsoever and with his fingers firmly tangled with Hongbin’s, leaving nothing more than a hastily written note behind on his bedspread. He’s still not even sure if they looked for him. He doesn’t care much.
Life was much less glamorous on the streets with Hongbin, but that didn’t mean that he enjoyed it any less. They slept where they could, always together, in each other’s arms, and most nights Wonsik wondered if it was possible for his heart to burst out his chest with how hard it beat against his ribcage when they pressed so close that that all he could hear was Hongbin, all he could smell, all he could see, because it sure felt like it.
They scavenged sometimes, stole most of the time, and the little zips Wonsik got in the pit of his belly each time Hongbin grinned mischievously at him from across the aisle, pockets stuffed to the brim, were enough to keep him from going back home even on the worst of days. He can’t even remember when harmless theft turned into armed robbery and then arson and murder, but it felt so natural he didn’t bring it up, how thing escalated so quickly -- so naturally.
He holds Hongbin in his arms now where they rest together in his room in the shared penthouse, elbows hooked against the curves of his shoulders and hands at the back of his head to keep him held close to his chest as he sleeps. He’s a hearth of warmth, a spectacle and a ball of fire even when he’s sleeping, face so childishly blank it’s amazing how endearing it is. Wonsik raises a hand, traces it along the side of Hongbin’s face, down his jaw, along his neck, and cries silently for a love he’s never had.
It’s been years, and he’s so transparent when it comes to showing it that he knows Hongbin must know how much he cares. He says I love you every night before bed, before every job, after every dangerous escapade, and he makes sure to keep eye contact to try and somehow broadcast all his feelings telepathically, transmit them into Hongbin’s head so maybe they’d be returned even the slightest bit.
They’re best friends before anything else but that doesn’t mean it hurts any less when Hongbin only smiles, mumbles an I love you, too, and drops it there. It doesn’t mean that he still doesn’t itch to hold him at even the most mundane of times, doesn’t have to physically concentrate on keeping his hands at his sides from where his fingers twitch with the urge to cup either of Hongbin’s cheeks, kiss him til he’s just as breathless as his smile makes Wonsik.
It’s after the first heist where he’s unable to keep himself held back any longer -- he’s never been good at it before and he’s surprised it’s taken this long for his will to break, though he’s sure that it’s partly due to the fact that he cares a whole lot about ruining things with Hongbin, more than he thinks he has about anything ever. It’s scary, when he thinks about it, and the fact that this is on impulse is probably the only reason it happens at all.
The other four are hyped as all hell over the comms and Hongbin is laughing too from beside him, carefree, lovely as ever. Jaehwan’d just got the rest of them out of the bank by cargobob and now the two of them are waiting for pickup atop the roof of a building a few blocks away from the bank; Hongbin’s tossing explosives off the side of the building as far as he can down the street, piling them in a general area so they can “leave in style”, as he puts it.
Jaehwan gives them the T-30 second warning over the earpieces and the trigger’s pulled, orange and black and red blooming from down below them and in a cloud over the tops of most of the roofs on the street. They’re both laughing and grinning and god, if Hongbin hasn’t ever looked more beautiful like this -- exhilarated, hopped up on the adrenaline of success, of all the planning of months before put into action and work and fuck if Wonsik can control himself, because he’s just as intoxicated on the high of the heist, of accomplishment, of Hongbin.
He seizes his fingers in the lapels of Hongbin’s jacket and tugs him forward until their lips are crashing together and it’s messy, cluttered, but better than anything he could have ever imagined. His eyes close but he can still see the explosions behind his eyelids, fireworks popping off and soaring high, high, high. Wonsik’s heart is going a mile in a minute in his chest and his grip only winds tighter into the other’s sweater, kiss softening for only a brief moment before there’s fingers wrapping around his wrists and it takes less seconds than it did to start the kiss than it does to stop it.
Hongbin drops his wrists like they’ve burned him and his smile is gone, now, replaced with an expression akin to shock and what Wonsik really, really hopes isn’t disgust, his mouth hanging open slightly and his eyes wider than usual. Any leftover triumph in his chest drops into dread at the bottom of his stomach as Wonsik’s hands begin to involuntarily tremble slightly in front of him.
It feels like they stare at each other for forever but it’s really only a few seconds, because Jaehwan is pulling up over the horizon earlier than even expected, a short ladder dropping out to dangle between the two of them as the wind whips around them, the moment cut in half in a split second.
Wonsik wants to talk about it, wants to apologize more than anything, but as soon as they get inside Hongbin attaches himself to Taekwoon’s side and laughs with him, smiles, celebrates the heist, and all of the words he’s had gathered in his head for years crack and fall away because if that isn’t a sign for let’s forget this then he isn’t sure what is.
He cries again that night, alone in his room in the penthouse for the first time in forever, fingertips hovering where his mouth is still prickling with the ghost of the other’s. He doesn’t know what he’d been expecting upon confessing, but this isn’t it.
It hurts more than he’d ever thought it would. Hongbin is still civil with him, still jokes around like he does with the other members of the crew, but it still feels as if he’s lost one of his limbs when he chooses to sit somewhere else and sleep somewhere else and eat anywhere else but by his side, because they’ve always been so attached at the hip.
Hakyeon comments on it offhandedly, one day, while the three of them and Taekwoon are gathered in the living room, “You guys have stopped your weird conjoined twin thing lately. What’s up with that?”
Wonsik’s throat has closed up and he stiffens in his seat beside the crew leader, fingers winding tight into the fabric of his own sweater as he curls his arms over his own stomach. Hongbin clearly doesn’t have the same problem, offering a nonchalant shrug, “I guess we’ve just grown apart a bit, or something. Can’t stick together forever in this line of work, anyways.”
He waits a few minutes until the conversation has moved on and everything is all but forgotten before quietly excusing himself to the bathroom, where he curls up in front of the toilet and does his best not to throw up with how hard he shakes, cries, how upset he is, how hurt.
He’s not sure how long he’s been sitting there when he gets up and washes his face but he’s restless, reckless, not paying attention to anything but strapping as many munitions to his belt and stuffing as many bombs as he possibly can into his bag. He slings it on over both his shoulders and dresses in all black and ignores the looks he gets when he walks past the living room and out the door, because if he met Hongbin’s eyes and they were worried, concerned, he’d be upset, but if they weren’t upset -- he doesn’t even want to think about it.
Wonsik doesn’t even bother taking a car from the garage. He’s had enough practice in the years of living on the streets to navigate them well, to climb fire escapes and hop roofs and he’s just about emptied his bag when he breaks down again, legs trembling beneath him and fingers wound tight into the tresses of his own hair. The sirens and the explosions and the height are too much, because they’re all that have haunted his dreams the past few weeks and he just can’t take it.
“Wonsik,” there’s a voice from behind him and it’s a wonder he doesn’t crumple right there at the tone Hongbin uses -- it’s so familiarly exasperated and fond and his fists curl so tight at his side that his knuckles burn white.
He doesn’t even want to know how he’s been found, so far away from the penthouse but he does feel the need to ask, “Why? Why are you here?” His words are surprisingly even, albeit quiet, the shakiness he feels instead mirrored in his arms, his legs, his jaw. He doesn’t turn around.
“Hakyeon practically forced me out,” he says and there’s just the hint of a laugh in his voice, but it’s strained. Wonsik hates that he can tell the difference. There’s footsteps and then there’s a hand on his shoulder and it takes all his willpower not to let his legs fall out from underneath him, “Are you... okay?”
“No.” And now Wonsik is laughing and he spins on his heel, his voice cracking as he takes a step back and shrugs the touch off of him. He runs a hand through his hair and stares down at Hongbin’s feet, refusing to look up even the slightest, “No, I’m not okay. Do I look okay?”
“You look like shit, if I’m honest,” says Hongbin, one foot just shuffling forward a half step before he seems to think better of himself and stops. There’s a pause, and then, “Is this about…?”
Wonsik snorts, “What do you think?”
From what he can see of the lower half of his body, Hongbin visibly bristles -- fists clenching, legs straightening, voice raising, “I’m sorry, but I can’t keep-- we can’t do this forever, Wonsik. I can’t.”
“Do what, Bin?” There’s a thickness to his voice when Wonsik goes to speak that he knows has to do with the tears that gather in the corner of his eyes, which he hastily raises a hand to wipe away, furious with himself. “I’m sorry that I tried to push my feelings onto you, but I don’t-- I don’t want my inability to have self-control to ruin this. Us.” He gestures between the two of them with one hand, taking the risk and looking up to meet Hongbin’s eyes. He regrets it immediately.
His mouth is pressed together into a sparse, quivering line, brow furrowed, forehead creased. His hands flounder at his sides for a few moments and his teeth sink into his lip for a moment before he manages to get out, “I can’t.”
“Can’t what?” Wonsik doesn’t even bother to let him try to continue, the hurt he’s been wallowing in, the rejection, bubbling up in a heady anger that spits fire along the column of his dry, cracking throat as he practically shouts himself hoarse, the hint of a deranged laugh hidden somewhere in the depths of his voice, “Can’t look at me, anymore? Can’t bear the thought of spending any more unnecessary seconds in my presence, can’t bring yourself to fucking touch me, can’t---” He chokes, cuts himself off, buckles in on himself slightly.
“Can we not even.. go back to before?” He asks, in a much smaller voice. Exhaustion weighs heavy on his shoulders and he feels like a kid again, doing anything and everything he could to please the young boy with the quick fingers and the wide smile and the dirty hair. Holding those quick fingers in his own, less dextrous ones, following him and his promise of a future, of excitement, of some sort of forever that wasn’t filled with textbooks and studying and doing things he despised. “Can we not even be friends, again?”
Hongbin doesn’t speak and he wants to continue, to ask why all those years of promising each other forevers and never leave yous can be thrown away so easily in his eyes, but the words get caught in his throat when Hongbin’s own echo in his head. Can’t stick together forever in this line of work, anyways. He physically holds his chest with one hand and his stomach with the other, only collapsing in further on himself.
“Wonsik,” it comes after a few more seconds of silence and he’s long since closed his eyes in an effort not to cry as hard as he wants to. Hongbin sounds distraught, voice wavering, and it catches him slightly off guard, eyes snapping open on reflex. “I don’t, I can’t--”
And it seems like he’s struggling with himself, jaw opening and anchoring to the side and eyes blinking up to the sky. From what Wonsik can see, he’s got the tip of his tongue pressed into the dip of one of his bottom molars, a nervous habit he’s had since the day they’d met, fingers furling and unfurling as he seems to struggle with finding what to say.
“I’ve taken… so much from you,” is how he starts, voice slow and just barely audible over the sirens that still blare from down below, a result of the cops still hunting for Wonsik. “I showed you horrible things and took you away from everything you’d ever known and I ruined any chances you might have had at a normal, safe life, and that’s unforgivable on my part.” Hongbin reaches up and cards his fingers through his own hair, pushing it back from his forehead and if he’s shaking when his arm falls, Wonsik doesn’t comment on it.
“I can’t let you just,” he stops himself and worries at his lip with his teeth, looking everywhere and anywhere but Wonsik himself. “I can’t let you fool yourself into letting me take this from you, too. You don’t love me, Shik. You couldn’t.”
“And why not?” It feels like their roles are flipped to what they’re supposed to be -- Wonsik is older, should be the one insisting on logic, on the fragility of love; Hongbin is younger, should be the one who doesn’t know love at all, insists he does. His voice raises again and he wants to seize the other by the shoulders, shake him til he sees that he’s not lying, that he knows, that he’s certain of this. “Why couldn’t I?”
“Because I’m not lovable!” Hongbin laughs it, voice high and false grin twitching from where it sits on his face. There are tears visible in the corners of his eyes, too, and he turns to the side to face the street as he wipes at them, movements sharp. “Because I’m already lucky enough that you’ve stuck around me this long at all, let alone would I be lucky enough to have you like that. Because I indulged myself too much and I’m not going to let you guilt trip yourself into thinking that you’ve ever liked me as much as I like you.”
Wonsik’s heard enough. He steps forward and fastens both Hongbin’s wrists into his grasp, pulling them to face each other, “Shut up. Just-- just shut up, Bin.” His voice cracks a little and his grip wavers slightly as his hands do, but he refuses to let go because he wants to say this, wants to look right into Hongbin’s eyes and just get it out, “I love you, ok? Not because of any sort of indebtment I feel or because of any sort of guilty conscience I’ve got going on -- I can’t even tell you, how long it’s been. I love you, for you. More than anything.”
It feels so, so good to get it out, and he feels his shoulders fall as the tension of keeping everything in for so long bleed out of them all in one go. His head ducks a little forward and his hold loosens just slightly, enough for Hongbin’s hands to slip from his hold and there’s just a moment of panic; he’s almost sure that this is it, that this is when the joke ends and the rejection comes and the ‘we can’t be friends’ follows suit and---
They’re kissing. Again. His cheeks are warm with both the palms that cup them and the blush that spreads across them and it takes him a moment to respond but when he does, Wonsik catches a firm hold of Hongbin’s waist and pulls him as close as humanly possible. It’s unpracticed and untidy but it’s perfect, either of them trying to clutch the other as close as possible, Hongbin mumbling little, “I love you”s against Wonsik’s lips whenever he has the breath. (Wonsik’s own breath runs so short that he can’t even find enough to say it back, just tries to kiss the words into Hongbin’s lips, tries to imprint them there.)
His chest swells so large, so full, it feels like he’s about to burst, peppering little kisses against Hongbin’s mouth when he has to breathe but doesn’t want to pull away yet, wants to get as much as he can. He figures the sound within his ears is just him being overwhelmed with emotion, reflected in a ringing inside his head, but it starts to sound suspiciously like helicopter blades and that’s when he pulls back, head turning away despite Hongbin’s soft huff of distaste.
The cargobob pulls up beside the building and Jaehwan and Sanghyuk are hanging out the side -- briefly, Wonsik wonders who’s flying, wonders how the fuck they found them and had such timing, but finds he doesn’t really care at the moment because there’s even odder things happening.
The two boys both set off confetti cannons with a loud whoop and the streamers come raining down on top of him and Hongbin, catching in their hair and on their shoulders. They both stand still in shocked silence, still a little breathless and a lot confused.
“Finally!” Jaehwan shouts at the same time that Sanghyuk groans, “Just bang already!” They both look at each other at the same time and laugh for a few moments before they’re cut off by Hakyeon stepping forward and chopping either of their necks.
He visibly sighs in what appears to be exasperated fondness, before he too yells over the sound of the blades, “We’re all very very happy for you and all, but please get back to the apartment soon. We’ve got new plans to go over and I’d like to get shit done before buyers get on my ass about it.” Wonsik nods dumbly in response, still shellshocked, and Hakyeon smiles, claps his hands together, “Good! See you lovebirds soon, then!”
The cargobob pulls up and away (though not before Jaehwan and Sanghyuk pull another set of confetti cannons out again and fire them, their twin laughter audible) and the two of them stare at it for a while as it fades over the horizon of buildings.
“Taekwoon was flying,” comments Hongbin, eventually, his voice sounding distant and thoughtful and just as shocked as he looks. His voice jerks Wonsik into remembering where they are, why his hands are on Hongbin’s waist and why his lips are tingling pleasantly. “Taekwoon agreed to that. They got him to fly them here to barge in on us and he actually did it. Taekwoon--”
Wonsik presses a small kiss to the corner of Hongbin’s mouth despite the little muffled noise he makes in protest, “Enough about Taekwoon. You’ve got me, a very handsome man who loves you very much, at your disposal, and you want to talk about him?”
Hongbin rolls his eyes but he’s grinning wide, all of his teeth showing and eyes crinkling and dimples visible. He reaches round, fingers hooking into the back of Wonsik’s belt, and in one smooth moment he tugs a stick of C4 off, taking a few steps back, “Let’s have a bit of fun before we go back, yeah?”
It’s clear to anyone who spends more than an hour around the two that Wonsik is in love with Hongbin beyond belief. Both of them are known as ‘the demolitions experts’, C4 more at home in their hands than anything -- but Wonsik thinks maybe, just maybe, he might trump that. With the smile Hongbin gives him, the way his fingers fit into the spaces between his own as he pulls him along, he thinks that maybe he’s wormed himself a little place in that heart of his.
“I couldn’t think of a better idea,” he says, and later when he kisses Hongbin beside an explosion again, he can feel the smile against his mouth and wonders how the hell he’d been able to wait this long for something so good. Something that comes so naturally. Later, when he holds Hongbin again at night and now kisses him before bed, he hopes to god that their forever lasts for years upon years. Later, when they emerge from Wonsik’s room holding hands and Taekwoon gives a soft, small, knowing smile, he pulls Hongbin close with an arm slung over his shoulders, kisses his temple, and mumbles a small confession into his hair.
He’s never giving this up.
pairings: wonsik/hongbin (rabin)
rating: pg-13
summary: It’s clear to anyone who spends more than an hour around the two that Wonsik is in love with Hongbin beyond belief. Both of them are known as ‘the demolitions experts’, C4 more at home in their hands than anything -- even each other, at times.
length: ~4.4k
warnings: gang violence, explosions
a/n: i wrote this like a month ago and posted to ao3 but only just remembered to post it here oopsie. part of gta!au
It’s clear to anyone who spends more than an hour around the two that Wonsik is in love with Hongbin beyond belief. Both of them are known as ‘the demolitions experts’, C4 more at home in their hands than anything -- even each other, at times.
Wonsik treats his explosives like spectacles, every munition and every trigger set down and aligned perfectly -- he argues sometimes with Hongbin over it, says that everything has to be just how he wants it, that yes, that 45 degree angle turn has to be exact in order for the destruction to be as beautiful as he wants. (He’ll never admit it, but they all know that the beauty is only to impress Hongbin himself, to see that sparkle in his eyes that nothing else can bring, to see the flames dance across his skin, to get that crooked grin wormed out of him that Wonsik loves so dearly.)
He throws off a myriad of explosives with timed triggers and paced out pulls to make sure everything is just how he wants it, just how he knows Hongbin likes it to be, eyes never truly on his work and mostly gravitating in towards Hongbin himself.
He may deal with dynamite like a tool for what he wants, but to Hongbin, it’s an extra limb.
He’s so much less of a perfectionist and it’s what keeps Wonsik breathless, coming back for more, craving, his carnage so haphazard yet still so put together. He tosses bombs and pulls detonators like they’re nothing, the split second decision of when to press the button seemingly second nature and the grin as he watches so large it’s a surprise his mouth doesn’t split his whole face in two.
Hongbin is an enigma that fascinates him to the ends of the earth. At this point there’s barely any moments left in his life Wonsik can think upon fondly that don’t include the other, there isn’t anyone he can possibly think of that he’d rather spend time with, there’s a complete and utter lack of attraction to anyone but the younger.
And it stings, sometimes, because he knows it’s not exactly the same both ways. Hongbin looks at fire and Hongbin looks at light and Hongbin looks at smoke and he’s full of awe and wonder but when he looks at Wonsik there’s not even close to as much admiration on his face and Wonsik despises himself for it. He thinks it’s his fault, sometimes, that he’s not abrasive enough, not explosive enough in nature to reign in his crewmate.
They’d arrived together on Hakyeon’s doorstep (--literally on his doorstep, his front porch, half collapsed against the frame of the door itself), Hongbin less trapped beneath Wonsik’s arm than he was clinging to it for his life. They’d done jobs together with the trio before, small bouts of demolition that they couldn’t manage on their own, and Wonsik didn’t know where else to turn, cuffs and collar dripping with blood and ears filled with nothing but Hongbin’s stuttered breathing, sirens and lights and all the chaos and gunfire around them nothing but background noise.
He remembers having to be physically pulled out of the room by Sanghyuk so that his own wounds could be checked, remembers feeling numb to anything but the fear running deep into his bones, the fear that he was going to be the only one to make it. He remembers staying at Hongbin’s bedside for days until he fully recovered, goofing off when they were both awake and holding hands when only he was still conscious, remembers kissing Hongbin’s hand when he was sure no one would hear or see and praying to a God he didn’t believe in that everything would end up okay.
Sometimes the others ask him what, exactly, brought them together, but at this point even Wonsik doesn’t even fully recall. He remembers home, he remembers his family, and he remembers the playground of his childhood, but nothing stands out further than the tiny bright eyes, the little filthy hands, the smile of the boy in the alleyway who led him away from his perfect nuclear life and to where he is now.
He hadn’t really ever planned out the rest of his years beyond what his parents had told him they wanted him to do -- Hongbin brought possibilities and Hongbin brought excitement and Hongbin brought a thrill beyond the dreary textbooks and lectures he was forced to sit through every day and really, Wonsik didn’t have a sliver of a chance when it came to resisting his charm. He didn’t give it a second thought, when the younger asked him to leave, packing his things in the dead of the night and slipping from the warmth of his room at home for the last time without any protest whatsoever and with his fingers firmly tangled with Hongbin’s, leaving nothing more than a hastily written note behind on his bedspread. He’s still not even sure if they looked for him. He doesn’t care much.
Life was much less glamorous on the streets with Hongbin, but that didn’t mean that he enjoyed it any less. They slept where they could, always together, in each other’s arms, and most nights Wonsik wondered if it was possible for his heart to burst out his chest with how hard it beat against his ribcage when they pressed so close that that all he could hear was Hongbin, all he could smell, all he could see, because it sure felt like it.
They scavenged sometimes, stole most of the time, and the little zips Wonsik got in the pit of his belly each time Hongbin grinned mischievously at him from across the aisle, pockets stuffed to the brim, were enough to keep him from going back home even on the worst of days. He can’t even remember when harmless theft turned into armed robbery and then arson and murder, but it felt so natural he didn’t bring it up, how thing escalated so quickly -- so naturally.
He holds Hongbin in his arms now where they rest together in his room in the shared penthouse, elbows hooked against the curves of his shoulders and hands at the back of his head to keep him held close to his chest as he sleeps. He’s a hearth of warmth, a spectacle and a ball of fire even when he’s sleeping, face so childishly blank it’s amazing how endearing it is. Wonsik raises a hand, traces it along the side of Hongbin’s face, down his jaw, along his neck, and cries silently for a love he’s never had.
It’s been years, and he’s so transparent when it comes to showing it that he knows Hongbin must know how much he cares. He says I love you every night before bed, before every job, after every dangerous escapade, and he makes sure to keep eye contact to try and somehow broadcast all his feelings telepathically, transmit them into Hongbin’s head so maybe they’d be returned even the slightest bit.
They’re best friends before anything else but that doesn’t mean it hurts any less when Hongbin only smiles, mumbles an I love you, too, and drops it there. It doesn’t mean that he still doesn’t itch to hold him at even the most mundane of times, doesn’t have to physically concentrate on keeping his hands at his sides from where his fingers twitch with the urge to cup either of Hongbin’s cheeks, kiss him til he’s just as breathless as his smile makes Wonsik.
It’s after the first heist where he’s unable to keep himself held back any longer -- he’s never been good at it before and he’s surprised it’s taken this long for his will to break, though he’s sure that it’s partly due to the fact that he cares a whole lot about ruining things with Hongbin, more than he thinks he has about anything ever. It’s scary, when he thinks about it, and the fact that this is on impulse is probably the only reason it happens at all.
The other four are hyped as all hell over the comms and Hongbin is laughing too from beside him, carefree, lovely as ever. Jaehwan’d just got the rest of them out of the bank by cargobob and now the two of them are waiting for pickup atop the roof of a building a few blocks away from the bank; Hongbin’s tossing explosives off the side of the building as far as he can down the street, piling them in a general area so they can “leave in style”, as he puts it.
Jaehwan gives them the T-30 second warning over the earpieces and the trigger’s pulled, orange and black and red blooming from down below them and in a cloud over the tops of most of the roofs on the street. They’re both laughing and grinning and god, if Hongbin hasn’t ever looked more beautiful like this -- exhilarated, hopped up on the adrenaline of success, of all the planning of months before put into action and work and fuck if Wonsik can control himself, because he’s just as intoxicated on the high of the heist, of accomplishment, of Hongbin.
He seizes his fingers in the lapels of Hongbin’s jacket and tugs him forward until their lips are crashing together and it’s messy, cluttered, but better than anything he could have ever imagined. His eyes close but he can still see the explosions behind his eyelids, fireworks popping off and soaring high, high, high. Wonsik’s heart is going a mile in a minute in his chest and his grip only winds tighter into the other’s sweater, kiss softening for only a brief moment before there’s fingers wrapping around his wrists and it takes less seconds than it did to start the kiss than it does to stop it.
Hongbin drops his wrists like they’ve burned him and his smile is gone, now, replaced with an expression akin to shock and what Wonsik really, really hopes isn’t disgust, his mouth hanging open slightly and his eyes wider than usual. Any leftover triumph in his chest drops into dread at the bottom of his stomach as Wonsik’s hands begin to involuntarily tremble slightly in front of him.
It feels like they stare at each other for forever but it’s really only a few seconds, because Jaehwan is pulling up over the horizon earlier than even expected, a short ladder dropping out to dangle between the two of them as the wind whips around them, the moment cut in half in a split second.
Wonsik wants to talk about it, wants to apologize more than anything, but as soon as they get inside Hongbin attaches himself to Taekwoon’s side and laughs with him, smiles, celebrates the heist, and all of the words he’s had gathered in his head for years crack and fall away because if that isn’t a sign for let’s forget this then he isn’t sure what is.
He cries again that night, alone in his room in the penthouse for the first time in forever, fingertips hovering where his mouth is still prickling with the ghost of the other’s. He doesn’t know what he’d been expecting upon confessing, but this isn’t it.
It hurts more than he’d ever thought it would. Hongbin is still civil with him, still jokes around like he does with the other members of the crew, but it still feels as if he’s lost one of his limbs when he chooses to sit somewhere else and sleep somewhere else and eat anywhere else but by his side, because they’ve always been so attached at the hip.
Hakyeon comments on it offhandedly, one day, while the three of them and Taekwoon are gathered in the living room, “You guys have stopped your weird conjoined twin thing lately. What’s up with that?”
Wonsik’s throat has closed up and he stiffens in his seat beside the crew leader, fingers winding tight into the fabric of his own sweater as he curls his arms over his own stomach. Hongbin clearly doesn’t have the same problem, offering a nonchalant shrug, “I guess we’ve just grown apart a bit, or something. Can’t stick together forever in this line of work, anyways.”
He waits a few minutes until the conversation has moved on and everything is all but forgotten before quietly excusing himself to the bathroom, where he curls up in front of the toilet and does his best not to throw up with how hard he shakes, cries, how upset he is, how hurt.
He’s not sure how long he’s been sitting there when he gets up and washes his face but he’s restless, reckless, not paying attention to anything but strapping as many munitions to his belt and stuffing as many bombs as he possibly can into his bag. He slings it on over both his shoulders and dresses in all black and ignores the looks he gets when he walks past the living room and out the door, because if he met Hongbin’s eyes and they were worried, concerned, he’d be upset, but if they weren’t upset -- he doesn’t even want to think about it.
Wonsik doesn’t even bother taking a car from the garage. He’s had enough practice in the years of living on the streets to navigate them well, to climb fire escapes and hop roofs and he’s just about emptied his bag when he breaks down again, legs trembling beneath him and fingers wound tight into the tresses of his own hair. The sirens and the explosions and the height are too much, because they’re all that have haunted his dreams the past few weeks and he just can’t take it.
“Wonsik,” there’s a voice from behind him and it’s a wonder he doesn’t crumple right there at the tone Hongbin uses -- it’s so familiarly exasperated and fond and his fists curl so tight at his side that his knuckles burn white.
He doesn’t even want to know how he’s been found, so far away from the penthouse but he does feel the need to ask, “Why? Why are you here?” His words are surprisingly even, albeit quiet, the shakiness he feels instead mirrored in his arms, his legs, his jaw. He doesn’t turn around.
“Hakyeon practically forced me out,” he says and there’s just the hint of a laugh in his voice, but it’s strained. Wonsik hates that he can tell the difference. There’s footsteps and then there’s a hand on his shoulder and it takes all his willpower not to let his legs fall out from underneath him, “Are you... okay?”
“No.” And now Wonsik is laughing and he spins on his heel, his voice cracking as he takes a step back and shrugs the touch off of him. He runs a hand through his hair and stares down at Hongbin’s feet, refusing to look up even the slightest, “No, I’m not okay. Do I look okay?”
“You look like shit, if I’m honest,” says Hongbin, one foot just shuffling forward a half step before he seems to think better of himself and stops. There’s a pause, and then, “Is this about…?”
Wonsik snorts, “What do you think?”
From what he can see of the lower half of his body, Hongbin visibly bristles -- fists clenching, legs straightening, voice raising, “I’m sorry, but I can’t keep-- we can’t do this forever, Wonsik. I can’t.”
“Do what, Bin?” There’s a thickness to his voice when Wonsik goes to speak that he knows has to do with the tears that gather in the corner of his eyes, which he hastily raises a hand to wipe away, furious with himself. “I’m sorry that I tried to push my feelings onto you, but I don’t-- I don’t want my inability to have self-control to ruin this. Us.” He gestures between the two of them with one hand, taking the risk and looking up to meet Hongbin’s eyes. He regrets it immediately.
His mouth is pressed together into a sparse, quivering line, brow furrowed, forehead creased. His hands flounder at his sides for a few moments and his teeth sink into his lip for a moment before he manages to get out, “I can’t.”
“Can’t what?” Wonsik doesn’t even bother to let him try to continue, the hurt he’s been wallowing in, the rejection, bubbling up in a heady anger that spits fire along the column of his dry, cracking throat as he practically shouts himself hoarse, the hint of a deranged laugh hidden somewhere in the depths of his voice, “Can’t look at me, anymore? Can’t bear the thought of spending any more unnecessary seconds in my presence, can’t bring yourself to fucking touch me, can’t---” He chokes, cuts himself off, buckles in on himself slightly.
“Can we not even.. go back to before?” He asks, in a much smaller voice. Exhaustion weighs heavy on his shoulders and he feels like a kid again, doing anything and everything he could to please the young boy with the quick fingers and the wide smile and the dirty hair. Holding those quick fingers in his own, less dextrous ones, following him and his promise of a future, of excitement, of some sort of forever that wasn’t filled with textbooks and studying and doing things he despised. “Can we not even be friends, again?”
Hongbin doesn’t speak and he wants to continue, to ask why all those years of promising each other forevers and never leave yous can be thrown away so easily in his eyes, but the words get caught in his throat when Hongbin’s own echo in his head. Can’t stick together forever in this line of work, anyways. He physically holds his chest with one hand and his stomach with the other, only collapsing in further on himself.
“Wonsik,” it comes after a few more seconds of silence and he’s long since closed his eyes in an effort not to cry as hard as he wants to. Hongbin sounds distraught, voice wavering, and it catches him slightly off guard, eyes snapping open on reflex. “I don’t, I can’t--”
And it seems like he’s struggling with himself, jaw opening and anchoring to the side and eyes blinking up to the sky. From what Wonsik can see, he’s got the tip of his tongue pressed into the dip of one of his bottom molars, a nervous habit he’s had since the day they’d met, fingers furling and unfurling as he seems to struggle with finding what to say.
“I’ve taken… so much from you,” is how he starts, voice slow and just barely audible over the sirens that still blare from down below, a result of the cops still hunting for Wonsik. “I showed you horrible things and took you away from everything you’d ever known and I ruined any chances you might have had at a normal, safe life, and that’s unforgivable on my part.” Hongbin reaches up and cards his fingers through his own hair, pushing it back from his forehead and if he’s shaking when his arm falls, Wonsik doesn’t comment on it.
“I can’t let you just,” he stops himself and worries at his lip with his teeth, looking everywhere and anywhere but Wonsik himself. “I can’t let you fool yourself into letting me take this from you, too. You don’t love me, Shik. You couldn’t.”
“And why not?” It feels like their roles are flipped to what they’re supposed to be -- Wonsik is older, should be the one insisting on logic, on the fragility of love; Hongbin is younger, should be the one who doesn’t know love at all, insists he does. His voice raises again and he wants to seize the other by the shoulders, shake him til he sees that he’s not lying, that he knows, that he’s certain of this. “Why couldn’t I?”
“Because I’m not lovable!” Hongbin laughs it, voice high and false grin twitching from where it sits on his face. There are tears visible in the corners of his eyes, too, and he turns to the side to face the street as he wipes at them, movements sharp. “Because I’m already lucky enough that you’ve stuck around me this long at all, let alone would I be lucky enough to have you like that. Because I indulged myself too much and I’m not going to let you guilt trip yourself into thinking that you’ve ever liked me as much as I like you.”
Wonsik’s heard enough. He steps forward and fastens both Hongbin’s wrists into his grasp, pulling them to face each other, “Shut up. Just-- just shut up, Bin.” His voice cracks a little and his grip wavers slightly as his hands do, but he refuses to let go because he wants to say this, wants to look right into Hongbin’s eyes and just get it out, “I love you, ok? Not because of any sort of indebtment I feel or because of any sort of guilty conscience I’ve got going on -- I can’t even tell you, how long it’s been. I love you, for you. More than anything.”
It feels so, so good to get it out, and he feels his shoulders fall as the tension of keeping everything in for so long bleed out of them all in one go. His head ducks a little forward and his hold loosens just slightly, enough for Hongbin’s hands to slip from his hold and there’s just a moment of panic; he’s almost sure that this is it, that this is when the joke ends and the rejection comes and the ‘we can’t be friends’ follows suit and---
They’re kissing. Again. His cheeks are warm with both the palms that cup them and the blush that spreads across them and it takes him a moment to respond but when he does, Wonsik catches a firm hold of Hongbin’s waist and pulls him as close as humanly possible. It’s unpracticed and untidy but it’s perfect, either of them trying to clutch the other as close as possible, Hongbin mumbling little, “I love you”s against Wonsik’s lips whenever he has the breath. (Wonsik’s own breath runs so short that he can’t even find enough to say it back, just tries to kiss the words into Hongbin’s lips, tries to imprint them there.)
His chest swells so large, so full, it feels like he’s about to burst, peppering little kisses against Hongbin’s mouth when he has to breathe but doesn’t want to pull away yet, wants to get as much as he can. He figures the sound within his ears is just him being overwhelmed with emotion, reflected in a ringing inside his head, but it starts to sound suspiciously like helicopter blades and that’s when he pulls back, head turning away despite Hongbin’s soft huff of distaste.
The cargobob pulls up beside the building and Jaehwan and Sanghyuk are hanging out the side -- briefly, Wonsik wonders who’s flying, wonders how the fuck they found them and had such timing, but finds he doesn’t really care at the moment because there’s even odder things happening.
The two boys both set off confetti cannons with a loud whoop and the streamers come raining down on top of him and Hongbin, catching in their hair and on their shoulders. They both stand still in shocked silence, still a little breathless and a lot confused.
“Finally!” Jaehwan shouts at the same time that Sanghyuk groans, “Just bang already!” They both look at each other at the same time and laugh for a few moments before they’re cut off by Hakyeon stepping forward and chopping either of their necks.
He visibly sighs in what appears to be exasperated fondness, before he too yells over the sound of the blades, “We’re all very very happy for you and all, but please get back to the apartment soon. We’ve got new plans to go over and I’d like to get shit done before buyers get on my ass about it.” Wonsik nods dumbly in response, still shellshocked, and Hakyeon smiles, claps his hands together, “Good! See you lovebirds soon, then!”
The cargobob pulls up and away (though not before Jaehwan and Sanghyuk pull another set of confetti cannons out again and fire them, their twin laughter audible) and the two of them stare at it for a while as it fades over the horizon of buildings.
“Taekwoon was flying,” comments Hongbin, eventually, his voice sounding distant and thoughtful and just as shocked as he looks. His voice jerks Wonsik into remembering where they are, why his hands are on Hongbin’s waist and why his lips are tingling pleasantly. “Taekwoon agreed to that. They got him to fly them here to barge in on us and he actually did it. Taekwoon--”
Wonsik presses a small kiss to the corner of Hongbin’s mouth despite the little muffled noise he makes in protest, “Enough about Taekwoon. You’ve got me, a very handsome man who loves you very much, at your disposal, and you want to talk about him?”
Hongbin rolls his eyes but he’s grinning wide, all of his teeth showing and eyes crinkling and dimples visible. He reaches round, fingers hooking into the back of Wonsik’s belt, and in one smooth moment he tugs a stick of C4 off, taking a few steps back, “Let’s have a bit of fun before we go back, yeah?”
It’s clear to anyone who spends more than an hour around the two that Wonsik is in love with Hongbin beyond belief. Both of them are known as ‘the demolitions experts’, C4 more at home in their hands than anything -- but Wonsik thinks maybe, just maybe, he might trump that. With the smile Hongbin gives him, the way his fingers fit into the spaces between his own as he pulls him along, he thinks that maybe he’s wormed himself a little place in that heart of his.
“I couldn’t think of a better idea,” he says, and later when he kisses Hongbin beside an explosion again, he can feel the smile against his mouth and wonders how the hell he’d been able to wait this long for something so good. Something that comes so naturally. Later, when he holds Hongbin again at night and now kisses him before bed, he hopes to god that their forever lasts for years upon years. Later, when they emerge from Wonsik’s room holding hands and Taekwoon gives a soft, small, knowing smile, he pulls Hongbin close with an arm slung over his shoulders, kisses his temple, and mumbles a small confession into his hair.
He’s never giving this up.