[infinite] the wavefunction collapse
Title: the wavefunction collapse
Rating: pg-13
Word count: 3270
Summary: There are many ways that Hoya and Dongwoo could have had their happy ending.
the wavefunction collapse
That's about all that can be said for plots, which anyway are just one thing after another, a what and a what and a what.
margaret atwood, "happy endings"
∞
After a long, successful run, Infinite disbands. Sunggyu does, much to Sungyeol's chagrin, remember to thank everyone ever involved in any of their successes during the two hour press conference. Myungsoo kicks Sungyeol under the table and tells him that it serves him right for squandering away his money in betting pools. After that-
For a happy ending, try A.
A.
Hoya slips Dongwoo an edge of wrapping paper with Ahra’s phone number right after they win their second consecutive Daesang, when they're getting drunk at a bar Sungyeol rented out for the occasion. Maybe it's because Dongwoo is still depressed, having heard that his middle school crush has been happily married for years (and, worse, to the boy who used to steal Dongwoo’s lunch money and kick him in the stomach for good measure afterwards), but he takes it and agrees to go out with her. Hoya's surprised, but figures that this is exactly what Dongwoo needs to shake off his misery, and gathers up the gifted bottles of expensive whiskey that Sungyeol hasn’t yet managed to co-opt. Hoya props his door open and waits for Dongwoo to come home miserable, to welcome him into Hoya's room and remind him that girls aren’t everything, to brush fingers along the back of his neck and tell him that Infinite is forever, that there is nothing else he’ll ever need, not when he has Hoya.
Hours pass. Hoya falls asleep waiting for Dongwoo. Three nights later, Dongwoo uncharacteristically asks Hoya to make his excuses to Sunggyu and cover for him during dance practice that evening.
“I want to see her again,” he says simply, yanking his t-shirt off and tossing it onto the growing pile of rejected outfits. “Do you think she’ll like me in purple?”
She does.
Sunggyu joins the army. Dongwoo goes with him. Infinite disbands, as expected, Woolim immediately offers to extend their contracts as solo performers, and only Woohyun takes them up on it. Sungyeol has already become a familiar face on television, and Sungjong DJs his own radio show four times a week between Star King tapings.
When Howon finishes his own two years of service, stumbling out of the military base into the arms of adoring fans reminding him that his name is, and always has been, Infinite's Hoya, Dongwoo approaches him with bright eyes and a brilliant grin and tells him that he'd proposed to Ahra, that she'd said yes, that they’re going to be married on the first day of summer. Thank you.
“Oh,” Hoya says. His uniform is still dusty. He wonders if the army will take him back.
Dongwoo marries Ahra, and Hoya is best man at the wedding. It’s a beautiful garden affair with ice sculptures and a string quartet. Two years later, Dongwoo returns the favor, and both couples spend a considerable amount of time together, because Hoya and Dongwoo are the closest of friends and their wives knew each other in elementary school. Small things, but it's always the most tenuous connections that end up successfully bridging space and time. In comparison, Sunggyu's supposed devotion manifests only in frequently mailed tickets to his sold-out solo concerts. Both Hoya and Dongwoo decided to stop going years ago, and Sungjong, Sungyeol, and Woohyun don’t have the time.
Hoya is pretty sure that he knows why Myungsoo keeps going, but Myungsoo always kept Hoya’s secrets; if, for nothing else, Hoya owes him for that.
Both couples have children; Dongwoo has three girls and two boys, and Hoya has twin daughters who, thankfully, look exactly like his wife and smile just as easily. Dongwoo eventually retires. Hoya teaches them all to dance and sing and is somewhat relieved when none of them take him up on his offer to debut in his entertainment company. Dongwoo and Ahra decide to sell their house and travel the world, maybe even see Kenya, and Hoya doesn't tell him about the series of minor health scares he's been having, just in case. He hides the pill case whenever Dongwoo comes by to learn how to knit. After fifty-seven years (give or take a few rough patches) of friendship, Dongwoo finally manages to finish a pair of mittens. They are slightly lopsided. He gives them to Ahra for her birthday, and even Hoya can admit that she’s never looked prettier then when she smiles, posing for the camera, arms held proudly aloft.
Eventually, they all die. This is the end of the story.
B.
Lee Nayoung walks up to Dongwoo in a café when his apartment's Internet cuts out and he realizes that he has just two days to finish choreographing the routine he owes Starship Entertainment and no way to play back the demo they emailed him. He grabs a coffee, she grabs a latté, and even if most of the tables are empty, she joins him at his.
“Do you know who I am?” Dongwoo asks tentatively, peering over the edge of his laptop. He's been out of the limelight for twenty-seven years, but there's always the chance that she's a scout, that she's-
“Not yet.” And then, a bit more boldly, "but I'd like to."
They hit it off immediately, and within five months, she’s moved a drawer of clothing into his apartment and started waking up in his shirts and eating cereal at his table in just her underwear. Dongwoo teaches her how to dance, and she’s lousy at it.
They get married. Dongwoo thinks about inviting all of his old bandmates, but there have been too many years of long silences for it to be more than just an afterthought. Nayoung walks down the aisle and, for a split second, Dongwoo thinks Hoya would have liked her in that dress as well. They always had shared similar tastes.
Dongwoo and Nayoung have three children, all boys, and Dongwoo takes turns housesitting when Nayoung has to work late. None of them like to dance either, so Dongwoo sends the boys off to university to major in Economics, Law, and History, retires, and moves to the countryside with Nayoung. It’s a beautiful cottage; a bit small, but Dongwoo is used to cramped spaces, and they’re very happy.
Eventually, they all die. This is the end of the story.
C.
Dongwoo officially announces his engagement to Cho Ahra three years after they met and started dating, sneaking out to go on long walks with Dongwoo in drag and Ahra in blazers. It had been Hoya’s idea, and he hadn’t expected their fans not to notice the sharp curve of Dongwoo’s jaw and his bushy eyebrows, but Dongwoo thanked him every time it worked, affecting ever more complicated get-ups, even borrowing Sungjong’s nail polish for “realism.”
Hoya waits for the day that Ahra realizes that Dongwoo’s face is all lopsided and that he can’t even carry a tune. It doesn’t come. Or it does, and she looks past it, just like he did. Hoya is surprised that he isn’t the only one in the world with an eye for all things Jang Dongwoo.
Dongwoo finishes his military service a year before Hoya, but he waits to hold the engagement party until after Hoya returns, because Hoya is the one who introduced them. Dongwoo calls it poetic justice. Hoya thinks he’s right, in too many different ways.
At the party, Dongwoo slips. He introduces Hoya as Lee Howon, his best man, and Hoya knocks back the rest of his drink and smiles and says of course he’ll do it, with a hand that shakes a bit too much to be completely honest. Dongwoo is obliviously happy and throws an arm around Hoya’s shoulder and slurs a drunken litany of thanks into his ear.
Between courses, Hoya escapes to the bathroom and retches uncontrollably, the weight of Dongwoo's friendship still pressing heavily into his back. A girl at the front desk offers him a toothbrush, a sad smile, and her name when he passes her for the third time, and at the end of the evening, desperate and lonely, he asks for her number.
Years trickle by. The burden of expectation eventually grows bearable.
Dongwoo marries Ahra, and Hoya is best man at the wedding. Everything continues as in A.
D.
A few months before Infinite disbands, Dongwoo wakes Hoya up with a giant bowl of hot chocolate.
“Shouldn’t it be seaweed soup,” Hoya moans into his pillow. Getting his own room has never stopped Dongwoo from coming to bother Hoya in the mornings. “And we have another hour to sleep. Go away.”
“But then we’ll miss celebrating your birthday.” Dongwoo pokes Hoya in the shoulder relentlessly. Hoya rolls over. Birthday fan meetings are always the worst; Hoya gets cake in his eyes and comes home with muscle cramps and truck-loads of presents that he doesn't want but has to use, at least on camera. Celebrations ought to be private, he thinks, replete with late mornings still curled sleepily around his pillow, for Dongwoo’s hand on his shoulder, for-
“All right, all right. I’m getting up.”
Dongwoo shoves the cocoa into his hands and grins. Hoya wonders why smiling has always come so easily to Dongwoo, why it's always been so difficult for himself. “Here. Drink this.”
“Do I want to know why it looks like you dumped an entire packet of marshmellows in here?”
“I tried to spell out ‘Hoya’ but just had room for ‘Ho.’ And you moved too much.”
“So it’s all my fault, even on my birthday?” It’s a bit too early for a long-suffering look, but Hoya does his best. Dongwoo’s laugh tickles his nose. “And you’re too close. Your breath smells.”
“I made up that nickname anyway. ‘I say Ho, you say Ya.’”
“That’s why it’s so lame.” Except Hoya doesn’t mean that, he means thank you and there’s too much water and not enough milk and stop digging your elbow into my pelvis but he’s never been good with words.
So Hoya drinks the hot chocolate and turns around and says nothing at all and everything continues as in A.
E.
Every year, Hoya knits a scarf for Dongwoo’s birthday. Dongwoo loses the one Hoya makes every single time, but he never manages to lose any of his expensive brand name accessories, so Hoya is convinced it’s on purpose until four years into their friendship, three years into Infinite, and Dongwoo is drunk and sprawled across his bed and his mouth is too close to Hoya’s ear. It's a good time for revelations.
“It’s because I don’t wear that other stuff as often. I wear your scarves all the time. They’re the best.”
Hoya hears something different. But Hoya has always heard something different. For all of Dongwoo’s awkwardness, he’s always been the least restrained, the most honest of the seven of them. It’s why Sunggyu, for all his repressiveness, has always loved Dongwoo best. Hoya, too.
“You okay?” Hoya asks instead of making a decision. Dongwoo’s breathing is slow and even and Hoya figures he’s too drunk to remember anything, but Hoya can’t chance it. Not when the rest of his career hinges on his sexual appeal. Not when Dongwoo’s friendship is the best thing these years have brought him, better than the Daesang or the Mutizens, the fans, the Louis Vuitton, his father's acceptance.
“I’ll be better.” And then, “I found out that she’s married. That girl from middle school.”
Dongwoo’s face is very close but Hoya’s never been one to make life changing decisions without at least a few years of forethought. Dongwoo sighs and flops over and eventually falls asleep.
Everything continues as in B.
F.
Dongwoo is very, very drunk when it happens. They’ve just won their first Daesang, Sunggyu has magnanimously decided to give them the evening off, and Dongwoo found the liquor stash that Hoya keeps under his bed ostensibly to stop Sungyeol from becoming a raging alcoholic before their popularity peaks.
When Dongwoo is drunk, his eyes flutter and his yawns are a bit messier and he curls into Hoya's side and leans in a bit too closely, as always, but this time Hoya's heart races and he can't feel anything except the thrum of desire and he leans back.
“Hoya,” Dongwoo says softly, pulling away. His eyes are wide and dark and Hoya wants to lean back in, to trace the warmth off of Dongwoo's mouth. Hoya's lack of self-control terrifies him.
“I’m drunk,” he says instead. He’s not. He’s drunk on the support of thousands of fans, on the sight of his name in lights on one of the biggest stages in South Korea, and on the high of performance. He hates whiskey. Like regret, it has a shitty aftertaste.
Dongwoo nods, casually wipes his sleeve across his lips, and curls back into Hoya's side.
They never talk about it again. After all, there are no gay people in South Korea.
Everything continues as in C.
G.
Hoya breaks up with his girlfriend right before they debut. He’s glad for the excuse; he thinks admitting that he’s gay wouldn’t have gone over too well. Dongwoo stumbles into his room, eyes drooping, face long.
“Sunggyu-hyung’s crazy,” he mumbles. “Wants you back in the studio within the hour. Where were you?”
“Cutting off loose ends.”
“Ah.” Dongwoo sits down, spreads his hands over his knees, and sighs. “But you wanted this.”
“Yeah.”
“You knew it would happen. You shouldn’t have started anything.”
Hoya is always amazed by Dongwoo’s honesty. “I know, genius.”
“Come back to the studio. The choreography doesn’t work without you.”
A deep breath, a moment of hesitation, and Dongwoo’s hand slides over onto Hoya’s thigh. It’s an innocuous gesture, in the scheme of things, but it’s where everything begins, where the dreams start, where four years of masturbation fantasies are born. Hoya doesn’t know this at the time, so he shrugs Dongwoo off uncomfortably and decides never to speak to Dongwoo again, never to look at his face or think about his long fingers, and the resolution lasts all of eight days before Hoya finds that they’re back to being friends.
“Best friends,” Dongwoo corrects, showing off his collection of Gundam memorabilia. “Forever.”
Hoya remembers that dreams are fictional and accidentally crushes Dongwoo’s favorite character with his foot. Everything continues as in A.
H.
They meet in the waiting room; Hoya is number 976 and Dongwoo is 979.
“Same audition group,” Dongwoo says in the bathroom, watching Hoya splash water on his face. “And I saw you last week at SM. Making the rounds?”
Hoya grunts noncommittally. He’s not really in the mood to talk. His phone buzzes in his pocket. Hoya checks the caller ID, sees it’s his father, and takes the battery out of the back.
“Girlfriend jealous? She’ll get over it.”
Hoya thinks it’s a bit too early in their relationship for Dongwoo to start offering unsolicited advice, especially since he looks like the happy sort of idiot whose parents support even the most unlikely of dreams. Dongwoo smiles this toothy, ugly smile, and Hoya thinks he might hate him. He walks out of the bathroom.
When it's his turn to perform, Dongwoo gives him two thumbs up and a grin and Hoya grits his teeth furiously and spitefully nails every move in his routine.
JYP calls him back three nights later and offers him a spot as a trainee. Hoya takes it, and pretends he doesn’t care when he never sees Dongwoo’s face again.
Everything continues as in B.
I.
Howon’s father never approves, so Howon finally gives up in middle school and decides that if he isn’t going to be able to dance, he wants to learn something as similar to dancing as possible. He goes for physics, immerses himself with the same dedication he once had for entertainment, and remains mostly unsatisfied with the decision. He wins a place at MIT for college, and hides his growing obsession with Korean pop music from his roommate.
He keeps an eye on some of his favorite groups, and is always disappointed when they end up falling apart, especially when they feature such promising talents, like that Jang Dongwoo.
Howon clandestinely attends exactly three meetings in MIT’s Rainbow Room and discovers that not a single counsellor understands that Howon isn’t looking to come out or be happy, he’s just looking to minimize the fallout.
“It’s different in Korea,” he says when he leaves for the last time. They ask him to stop, to come back, to just try and listen, but he’s slipped his headphones back over his ears and doesn’t hear.
He meets a boy named Daniel Breck at a party, and somehow they end up in bed together. It’s good, but it’s not great. Daniel leaves a bunch of hip-hop CDs scattered over Howon’s duvet.
The music is mind-blowing, the sex doesn’t get much better, and Howon graduates with a Bachelors of Science in Course 22, "Nuclear Science and Engineering."
Howon moves home when he has a PhD and his parents start complaining about his perpetual absence. “When will you get married,” his mother asks in emails, over the phone, and when she meets him at the airport, worry-lines etched into her face.
He doesn’t want to disappoint her, but he’s infinitely glad that he isn’t the eldest son. “Soon,” he says.
Barring the occasional indiscretion, Howon waits until his parents pass away to indulge in his sexuality. After coming out during a press conference five months later, an unfortunate accident precipitated by a late-night run-in with too many reporters to bribe, neither of his brothers agree to speak to him again, and Howon is fairly okay with that. He's lucky that his tenure at KAIST grants him a modicum of protection, and that his significant body of research makes him indispensable. Altogether, there's less fallout than expected.
He lives a happy, fulfilled life. It’s a bit lonely, but Lee Howon has always been sort of lonely.
He passes away peacefully in a hospital bed surrounded by well-wishers and fans when he’s one hundred and one, a national treasure for his contributions to South Korea’s nuclear science, and the plaintiff in a landmark case for gay rights. He leaves his estate to MIT's Rainbow Room, and his body to science.
This is the end of the story.
J.
When they first meet, Hoya notices that Dongwoo's smile is wide and stupid. Hoya wishes it was that easy to forget the constant self-censor, to let everything loose and just feel.
“It is that easy,” Dongwoo explains, sticking grubby fingers into the centers of Hoya's cheeks and forcing his mouth open.
Dongwoo’s teeth are edging into his bottom lip and his eyes are narrowed and he's probably the ugliest idol to ever debut, but Hoya shivers. He feels his stomach drop and his chest seize and he's pretty sure that this is exactly what he's been singing about, this is hitting all the right notes during a concert, this is executing a perfect step-spin, this is love.
“Teach me that,” he says. I’m also probably in love with you, he thinks helplessly.
Dongwoo does. They practice together every morning. Hoya learns to breathe around Dongwoo all over again, eventually Hoya perfects the art of at least pretending that he's letting go, and everything continues as in C.
K.
“Teach me that.” And, just because there's nothing to lose when he already has nothing, “I’m also probably in love with you,” Hoya admits helplessly.
It’s easy, it’s so easy to say it, to feel Dongwoo tense and watch his arms fall and his face contort and if Hoya wasn’t such a masochist, he’d stop looking, he'd run away and never look back. He'd-
He doesn’t. And Dongwoo steps forward, grabs the back of Hoya’s neck, and pulls him in for a kiss. Something explodes behind Hoya’s eyelids. Somehow he can’t feel the floor. Later he tries to put the feeling to words and write a song about it, but the hangeul evades him, and it's okay; there are some thing you don't need to share with anyone.
“Hoya,” Dongwoo says breathlessly, smiling. It’s the stupidest smile in the world and Hoya wants to kiss it off Dongwoo's face and so he tries, he tries for years and years and years.
So much for endings.
a/n: the idea and format for this fic was cribbed almost entirely from margaret atwood's short story "happy endings".
as always, thank you to my dearest beta reifica, a girl more beautiful than maxwell's equations, and more tenacious than gravity. if fanfiction could solve any of your problems, i'd write you all the words in the world. ♥
Rating: pg-13
Word count: 3270
Summary: There are many ways that Hoya and Dongwoo could have had their happy ending.
the wavefunction collapse
That's about all that can be said for plots, which anyway are just one thing after another, a what and a what and a what.
margaret atwood, "happy endings"
∞
After a long, successful run, Infinite disbands. Sunggyu does, much to Sungyeol's chagrin, remember to thank everyone ever involved in any of their successes during the two hour press conference. Myungsoo kicks Sungyeol under the table and tells him that it serves him right for squandering away his money in betting pools. After that-
For a happy ending, try A.
A.
Hoya slips Dongwoo an edge of wrapping paper with Ahra’s phone number right after they win their second consecutive Daesang, when they're getting drunk at a bar Sungyeol rented out for the occasion. Maybe it's because Dongwoo is still depressed, having heard that his middle school crush has been happily married for years (and, worse, to the boy who used to steal Dongwoo’s lunch money and kick him in the stomach for good measure afterwards), but he takes it and agrees to go out with her. Hoya's surprised, but figures that this is exactly what Dongwoo needs to shake off his misery, and gathers up the gifted bottles of expensive whiskey that Sungyeol hasn’t yet managed to co-opt. Hoya props his door open and waits for Dongwoo to come home miserable, to welcome him into Hoya's room and remind him that girls aren’t everything, to brush fingers along the back of his neck and tell him that Infinite is forever, that there is nothing else he’ll ever need, not when he has Hoya.
Hours pass. Hoya falls asleep waiting for Dongwoo. Three nights later, Dongwoo uncharacteristically asks Hoya to make his excuses to Sunggyu and cover for him during dance practice that evening.
“I want to see her again,” he says simply, yanking his t-shirt off and tossing it onto the growing pile of rejected outfits. “Do you think she’ll like me in purple?”
She does.
Sunggyu joins the army. Dongwoo goes with him. Infinite disbands, as expected, Woolim immediately offers to extend their contracts as solo performers, and only Woohyun takes them up on it. Sungyeol has already become a familiar face on television, and Sungjong DJs his own radio show four times a week between Star King tapings.
When Howon finishes his own two years of service, stumbling out of the military base into the arms of adoring fans reminding him that his name is, and always has been, Infinite's Hoya, Dongwoo approaches him with bright eyes and a brilliant grin and tells him that he'd proposed to Ahra, that she'd said yes, that they’re going to be married on the first day of summer. Thank you.
“Oh,” Hoya says. His uniform is still dusty. He wonders if the army will take him back.
Dongwoo marries Ahra, and Hoya is best man at the wedding. It’s a beautiful garden affair with ice sculptures and a string quartet. Two years later, Dongwoo returns the favor, and both couples spend a considerable amount of time together, because Hoya and Dongwoo are the closest of friends and their wives knew each other in elementary school. Small things, but it's always the most tenuous connections that end up successfully bridging space and time. In comparison, Sunggyu's supposed devotion manifests only in frequently mailed tickets to his sold-out solo concerts. Both Hoya and Dongwoo decided to stop going years ago, and Sungjong, Sungyeol, and Woohyun don’t have the time.
Hoya is pretty sure that he knows why Myungsoo keeps going, but Myungsoo always kept Hoya’s secrets; if, for nothing else, Hoya owes him for that.
Both couples have children; Dongwoo has three girls and two boys, and Hoya has twin daughters who, thankfully, look exactly like his wife and smile just as easily. Dongwoo eventually retires. Hoya teaches them all to dance and sing and is somewhat relieved when none of them take him up on his offer to debut in his entertainment company. Dongwoo and Ahra decide to sell their house and travel the world, maybe even see Kenya, and Hoya doesn't tell him about the series of minor health scares he's been having, just in case. He hides the pill case whenever Dongwoo comes by to learn how to knit. After fifty-seven years (give or take a few rough patches) of friendship, Dongwoo finally manages to finish a pair of mittens. They are slightly lopsided. He gives them to Ahra for her birthday, and even Hoya can admit that she’s never looked prettier then when she smiles, posing for the camera, arms held proudly aloft.
Eventually, they all die. This is the end of the story.
B.
Lee Nayoung walks up to Dongwoo in a café when his apartment's Internet cuts out and he realizes that he has just two days to finish choreographing the routine he owes Starship Entertainment and no way to play back the demo they emailed him. He grabs a coffee, she grabs a latté, and even if most of the tables are empty, she joins him at his.
“Do you know who I am?” Dongwoo asks tentatively, peering over the edge of his laptop. He's been out of the limelight for twenty-seven years, but there's always the chance that she's a scout, that she's-
“Not yet.” And then, a bit more boldly, "but I'd like to."
They hit it off immediately, and within five months, she’s moved a drawer of clothing into his apartment and started waking up in his shirts and eating cereal at his table in just her underwear. Dongwoo teaches her how to dance, and she’s lousy at it.
They get married. Dongwoo thinks about inviting all of his old bandmates, but there have been too many years of long silences for it to be more than just an afterthought. Nayoung walks down the aisle and, for a split second, Dongwoo thinks Hoya would have liked her in that dress as well. They always had shared similar tastes.
Dongwoo and Nayoung have three children, all boys, and Dongwoo takes turns housesitting when Nayoung has to work late. None of them like to dance either, so Dongwoo sends the boys off to university to major in Economics, Law, and History, retires, and moves to the countryside with Nayoung. It’s a beautiful cottage; a bit small, but Dongwoo is used to cramped spaces, and they’re very happy.
Eventually, they all die. This is the end of the story.
C.
Dongwoo officially announces his engagement to Cho Ahra three years after they met and started dating, sneaking out to go on long walks with Dongwoo in drag and Ahra in blazers. It had been Hoya’s idea, and he hadn’t expected their fans not to notice the sharp curve of Dongwoo’s jaw and his bushy eyebrows, but Dongwoo thanked him every time it worked, affecting ever more complicated get-ups, even borrowing Sungjong’s nail polish for “realism.”
Hoya waits for the day that Ahra realizes that Dongwoo’s face is all lopsided and that he can’t even carry a tune. It doesn’t come. Or it does, and she looks past it, just like he did. Hoya is surprised that he isn’t the only one in the world with an eye for all things Jang Dongwoo.
Dongwoo finishes his military service a year before Hoya, but he waits to hold the engagement party until after Hoya returns, because Hoya is the one who introduced them. Dongwoo calls it poetic justice. Hoya thinks he’s right, in too many different ways.
At the party, Dongwoo slips. He introduces Hoya as Lee Howon, his best man, and Hoya knocks back the rest of his drink and smiles and says of course he’ll do it, with a hand that shakes a bit too much to be completely honest. Dongwoo is obliviously happy and throws an arm around Hoya’s shoulder and slurs a drunken litany of thanks into his ear.
Between courses, Hoya escapes to the bathroom and retches uncontrollably, the weight of Dongwoo's friendship still pressing heavily into his back. A girl at the front desk offers him a toothbrush, a sad smile, and her name when he passes her for the third time, and at the end of the evening, desperate and lonely, he asks for her number.
Years trickle by. The burden of expectation eventually grows bearable.
Dongwoo marries Ahra, and Hoya is best man at the wedding. Everything continues as in A.
D.
A few months before Infinite disbands, Dongwoo wakes Hoya up with a giant bowl of hot chocolate.
“Shouldn’t it be seaweed soup,” Hoya moans into his pillow. Getting his own room has never stopped Dongwoo from coming to bother Hoya in the mornings. “And we have another hour to sleep. Go away.”
“But then we’ll miss celebrating your birthday.” Dongwoo pokes Hoya in the shoulder relentlessly. Hoya rolls over. Birthday fan meetings are always the worst; Hoya gets cake in his eyes and comes home with muscle cramps and truck-loads of presents that he doesn't want but has to use, at least on camera. Celebrations ought to be private, he thinks, replete with late mornings still curled sleepily around his pillow, for Dongwoo’s hand on his shoulder, for-
“All right, all right. I’m getting up.”
Dongwoo shoves the cocoa into his hands and grins. Hoya wonders why smiling has always come so easily to Dongwoo, why it's always been so difficult for himself. “Here. Drink this.”
“Do I want to know why it looks like you dumped an entire packet of marshmellows in here?”
“I tried to spell out ‘Hoya’ but just had room for ‘Ho.’ And you moved too much.”
“So it’s all my fault, even on my birthday?” It’s a bit too early for a long-suffering look, but Hoya does his best. Dongwoo’s laugh tickles his nose. “And you’re too close. Your breath smells.”
“I made up that nickname anyway. ‘I say Ho, you say Ya.’”
“That’s why it’s so lame.” Except Hoya doesn’t mean that, he means thank you and there’s too much water and not enough milk and stop digging your elbow into my pelvis but he’s never been good with words.
So Hoya drinks the hot chocolate and turns around and says nothing at all and everything continues as in A.
E.
Every year, Hoya knits a scarf for Dongwoo’s birthday. Dongwoo loses the one Hoya makes every single time, but he never manages to lose any of his expensive brand name accessories, so Hoya is convinced it’s on purpose until four years into their friendship, three years into Infinite, and Dongwoo is drunk and sprawled across his bed and his mouth is too close to Hoya’s ear. It's a good time for revelations.
“It’s because I don’t wear that other stuff as often. I wear your scarves all the time. They’re the best.”
Hoya hears something different. But Hoya has always heard something different. For all of Dongwoo’s awkwardness, he’s always been the least restrained, the most honest of the seven of them. It’s why Sunggyu, for all his repressiveness, has always loved Dongwoo best. Hoya, too.
“You okay?” Hoya asks instead of making a decision. Dongwoo’s breathing is slow and even and Hoya figures he’s too drunk to remember anything, but Hoya can’t chance it. Not when the rest of his career hinges on his sexual appeal. Not when Dongwoo’s friendship is the best thing these years have brought him, better than the Daesang or the Mutizens, the fans, the Louis Vuitton, his father's acceptance.
“I’ll be better.” And then, “I found out that she’s married. That girl from middle school.”
Dongwoo’s face is very close but Hoya’s never been one to make life changing decisions without at least a few years of forethought. Dongwoo sighs and flops over and eventually falls asleep.
Everything continues as in B.
F.
Dongwoo is very, very drunk when it happens. They’ve just won their first Daesang, Sunggyu has magnanimously decided to give them the evening off, and Dongwoo found the liquor stash that Hoya keeps under his bed ostensibly to stop Sungyeol from becoming a raging alcoholic before their popularity peaks.
When Dongwoo is drunk, his eyes flutter and his yawns are a bit messier and he curls into Hoya's side and leans in a bit too closely, as always, but this time Hoya's heart races and he can't feel anything except the thrum of desire and he leans back.
“Hoya,” Dongwoo says softly, pulling away. His eyes are wide and dark and Hoya wants to lean back in, to trace the warmth off of Dongwoo's mouth. Hoya's lack of self-control terrifies him.
“I’m drunk,” he says instead. He’s not. He’s drunk on the support of thousands of fans, on the sight of his name in lights on one of the biggest stages in South Korea, and on the high of performance. He hates whiskey. Like regret, it has a shitty aftertaste.
Dongwoo nods, casually wipes his sleeve across his lips, and curls back into Hoya's side.
They never talk about it again. After all, there are no gay people in South Korea.
Everything continues as in C.
G.
Hoya breaks up with his girlfriend right before they debut. He’s glad for the excuse; he thinks admitting that he’s gay wouldn’t have gone over too well. Dongwoo stumbles into his room, eyes drooping, face long.
“Sunggyu-hyung’s crazy,” he mumbles. “Wants you back in the studio within the hour. Where were you?”
“Cutting off loose ends.”
“Ah.” Dongwoo sits down, spreads his hands over his knees, and sighs. “But you wanted this.”
“Yeah.”
“You knew it would happen. You shouldn’t have started anything.”
Hoya is always amazed by Dongwoo’s honesty. “I know, genius.”
“Come back to the studio. The choreography doesn’t work without you.”
A deep breath, a moment of hesitation, and Dongwoo’s hand slides over onto Hoya’s thigh. It’s an innocuous gesture, in the scheme of things, but it’s where everything begins, where the dreams start, where four years of masturbation fantasies are born. Hoya doesn’t know this at the time, so he shrugs Dongwoo off uncomfortably and decides never to speak to Dongwoo again, never to look at his face or think about his long fingers, and the resolution lasts all of eight days before Hoya finds that they’re back to being friends.
“Best friends,” Dongwoo corrects, showing off his collection of Gundam memorabilia. “Forever.”
Hoya remembers that dreams are fictional and accidentally crushes Dongwoo’s favorite character with his foot. Everything continues as in A.
H.
They meet in the waiting room; Hoya is number 976 and Dongwoo is 979.
“Same audition group,” Dongwoo says in the bathroom, watching Hoya splash water on his face. “And I saw you last week at SM. Making the rounds?”
Hoya grunts noncommittally. He’s not really in the mood to talk. His phone buzzes in his pocket. Hoya checks the caller ID, sees it’s his father, and takes the battery out of the back.
“Girlfriend jealous? She’ll get over it.”
Hoya thinks it’s a bit too early in their relationship for Dongwoo to start offering unsolicited advice, especially since he looks like the happy sort of idiot whose parents support even the most unlikely of dreams. Dongwoo smiles this toothy, ugly smile, and Hoya thinks he might hate him. He walks out of the bathroom.
When it's his turn to perform, Dongwoo gives him two thumbs up and a grin and Hoya grits his teeth furiously and spitefully nails every move in his routine.
JYP calls him back three nights later and offers him a spot as a trainee. Hoya takes it, and pretends he doesn’t care when he never sees Dongwoo’s face again.
Everything continues as in B.
I.
Howon’s father never approves, so Howon finally gives up in middle school and decides that if he isn’t going to be able to dance, he wants to learn something as similar to dancing as possible. He goes for physics, immerses himself with the same dedication he once had for entertainment, and remains mostly unsatisfied with the decision. He wins a place at MIT for college, and hides his growing obsession with Korean pop music from his roommate.
He keeps an eye on some of his favorite groups, and is always disappointed when they end up falling apart, especially when they feature such promising talents, like that Jang Dongwoo.
Howon clandestinely attends exactly three meetings in MIT’s Rainbow Room and discovers that not a single counsellor understands that Howon isn’t looking to come out or be happy, he’s just looking to minimize the fallout.
“It’s different in Korea,” he says when he leaves for the last time. They ask him to stop, to come back, to just try and listen, but he’s slipped his headphones back over his ears and doesn’t hear.
He meets a boy named Daniel Breck at a party, and somehow they end up in bed together. It’s good, but it’s not great. Daniel leaves a bunch of hip-hop CDs scattered over Howon’s duvet.
The music is mind-blowing, the sex doesn’t get much better, and Howon graduates with a Bachelors of Science in Course 22, "Nuclear Science and Engineering."
Howon moves home when he has a PhD and his parents start complaining about his perpetual absence. “When will you get married,” his mother asks in emails, over the phone, and when she meets him at the airport, worry-lines etched into her face.
He doesn’t want to disappoint her, but he’s infinitely glad that he isn’t the eldest son. “Soon,” he says.
Barring the occasional indiscretion, Howon waits until his parents pass away to indulge in his sexuality. After coming out during a press conference five months later, an unfortunate accident precipitated by a late-night run-in with too many reporters to bribe, neither of his brothers agree to speak to him again, and Howon is fairly okay with that. He's lucky that his tenure at KAIST grants him a modicum of protection, and that his significant body of research makes him indispensable. Altogether, there's less fallout than expected.
He lives a happy, fulfilled life. It’s a bit lonely, but Lee Howon has always been sort of lonely.
He passes away peacefully in a hospital bed surrounded by well-wishers and fans when he’s one hundred and one, a national treasure for his contributions to South Korea’s nuclear science, and the plaintiff in a landmark case for gay rights. He leaves his estate to MIT's Rainbow Room, and his body to science.
This is the end of the story.
J.
When they first meet, Hoya notices that Dongwoo's smile is wide and stupid. Hoya wishes it was that easy to forget the constant self-censor, to let everything loose and just feel.
“It is that easy,” Dongwoo explains, sticking grubby fingers into the centers of Hoya's cheeks and forcing his mouth open.
Dongwoo’s teeth are edging into his bottom lip and his eyes are narrowed and he's probably the ugliest idol to ever debut, but Hoya shivers. He feels his stomach drop and his chest seize and he's pretty sure that this is exactly what he's been singing about, this is hitting all the right notes during a concert, this is executing a perfect step-spin, this is love.
“Teach me that,” he says. I’m also probably in love with you, he thinks helplessly.
Dongwoo does. They practice together every morning. Hoya learns to breathe around Dongwoo all over again, eventually Hoya perfects the art of at least pretending that he's letting go, and everything continues as in C.
K.
“Teach me that.” And, just because there's nothing to lose when he already has nothing, “I’m also probably in love with you,” Hoya admits helplessly.
It’s easy, it’s so easy to say it, to feel Dongwoo tense and watch his arms fall and his face contort and if Hoya wasn’t such a masochist, he’d stop looking, he'd run away and never look back. He'd-
He doesn’t. And Dongwoo steps forward, grabs the back of Hoya’s neck, and pulls him in for a kiss. Something explodes behind Hoya’s eyelids. Somehow he can’t feel the floor. Later he tries to put the feeling to words and write a song about it, but the hangeul evades him, and it's okay; there are some thing you don't need to share with anyone.
“Hoya,” Dongwoo says breathlessly, smiling. It’s the stupidest smile in the world and Hoya wants to kiss it off Dongwoo's face and so he tries, he tries for years and years and years.
So much for endings.
a/n: the idea and format for this fic was cribbed almost entirely from margaret atwood's short story "happy endings".
as always, thank you to my dearest beta reifica, a girl more beautiful than maxwell's equations, and more tenacious than gravity. if fanfiction could solve any of your problems, i'd write you all the words in the world. ♥