(sunggyu/hyunsoo) the one with the electric guitar
Title: the one with the electric guitar
Pairing: Sunggyu/Hyunsoo
Rating: G
spoilers until episode 6 of shut up! flower boy band
the one with the electric guitar
aka a very self-indulgent fic
Sunggyu does not remember them by names, but by characteristics. Examples include the Roommate, the Dancer who spends way too much time in the practice studio and not enough time in vocal training, the Quiet Trainee with his inherently sad smile, the Pretty Trainee and The One With the Electric Guitar.
He is pretty sure the last trainee’s real name is Hyunsoo. Kim Hyunsoo? Lee Hyungsoo? It doesn’t-shouldn’t matter to him, except Sunggyu has heard The One With the Electric Guitar playing in the middle of the nights, the quiet sound of something large (like an amplifier) scrapping over the tiles of the dorm before the coarse and painfully familiar sound of an electric guitar fills the night.
It has happened more than once, and Woohyun always tosses in his bed next to Sunggyu, who stares up at the ceiling as he feels the notes resonate against his skin and then deeper, to the bone.
He wonders why the boy is here, relinquishing everything to become an idol when he could be on the stage, with a guitar strapped across his chest and solid group members with never enough cash.
More often than that, it makes Sunggyu wonder why he’s here, too.
Today, Sunggyu fights with the Roommate on the way to vocal practice, during their five-minute breaks in the studio and on the way home.
“You should run more so you’ll have better breath control,” he says, looking at the Roommate who crashes down on his bed, eyes squeezed shut.
“Just because you were in a rock band doesn’t mean you have excellent breathing techniques,” he replies and it’s true but that is not the point.
“That’s not the point-”
“Hyung,” his Roommate sighs loudly and this is the problem with having a group with more than one main singer, the problem with people getting to know you almost as well as you know yourself, the problem with the promise of idol-hood. Sunggyu grabs his own running shoes from under the bed and marches out.
He pulls open the front door when The One With the Electric Guitar storms in and their shoulders hit so hard Sunggyu feels his lungs expel all the air in them. He’s left gasping at the boy, the shoes pooled around his feet.
The boy steps over him indifferently, and Sunggyu reaches out to grab him by the leg. “Hey, you don’t knock someone over and forget to apologize.”
“Let go of me.”
“You should apologize.”
He shrugs. “Sorry.”
Sunggyu tightens his grip and the boy exhales impatiently, a sound that hisses in the silence around them. He can only stare at the boy, feeling his fingers dig into the denim of the boy’s frayed jeans.
“Sorry, hyung,” The One With the Electric Guitar says, yanking his leg out of Sunggyu’s grip and disappearing into one of the rooms.
Sunggyu sits there, staring at the darkened room and he can see the boy’s silhouette moving about steadily around the room. He appears to be unzipping something in a case and Sunggyu knows it’s a guitar.
“What are you doing on the floor,” a voice says and Sunggyu turns around to find his Roommate staring down at him. His eyes are tired and he sticks out a hand, one that Sunggyu reaches for.
His touch warm and clammy and Sunggyu does not know what to feel: about himself or the Roommate or The One With the Electric Guitar; about this place and about spending the next five years as an idol, clean and polished and flawlessly manufactured down to hair colour and hobbies.
The next time he hears the familiar whine of an electric guitar in the middle of the night, Sunggyu throws on a jacket and steps carefully over the Roommate. The door creaks open silently enough and when he’s in the living room, he can see the front door is opened, a long cord connected to the power point and snaking all the way outside.
As expected, The One With the Electric Guitar is there, standing on the tiny entrance with a guitar in hand and the amplifier is on its lowest volume lest the neighbors complain and the managers find out.
Sunggyu pushes open the door open and the boy hears him because he stops strumming and everything falls into an uncomfortable silence. Even in the dim light, he can tell the boy is glaring at him. “What are you doing here?” he asks angrily, but Sunggyu can tell he’s relieved from the way his fingers loosen on the neck of his guitar that it’s only a trainee.
“I could ask you the same question.”
He scowls at Sunggyu.
“Go back to sleep. Your beauty sleep-you need it.”
“Why are you even here if all you want to do is play your guitar? You can’t dance and you can barely sing - do you know how many other boys would kill for your place?”
“We all have our reasons for being here,” he says, tone balancing out to something more blasé as he runs his fingers down the strings almost tenderly. “Even you,” he adds, looking back up at Sunggyu and the faint glow of the streetlights catch more shadows than light across his features.
“Go to sleep soon,” Sunggyu says before he leaves and the boy starts up his guitar as a response.
Sunggyu falls to sleep to the riffs of the guitar and his cellphone pressed to his chest, after scrolling through the numbers of his past band members so rapidly that their names are burned to his corneas. He never calls them. They don’t call, either.
“You look terrible,” the Roommate tells him.
Sunggyu disagrees curtly even though he knows it is true: he’s been spending most of his nights out on the front of the dorm with The One With the Electric Guitar, sitting on the ledge with his legs swinging over the edges as the boy pours his soul into his guitar.
The boy always stays out longer than Sunggyu, and whenever their schedules clash, Sunggyu always notes the boy is always a step too slow or a note too high.
It’s stupid, but admirable.
And Sunggyu does tell him, “It’s stupid, but admirable,” and the boy has to stop playing because he laughs so hard he has to hold onto the amplifier for support. Sunggyu notes he has a nice laugh-he could have a nice voice, if only he practiced.
When he finally stops laughing, he asks Sunggyu a question. “Why are you out here, watching me?”
You intrigue me, Sunggyu thinks. He says instead, “I used to be in a band as well.”
He cocks an eyebrow.
“I was the lead singer.”
“Yeah, I can tell,” he says, lips pressed together in a smirk but his eyes betray amusement.
“Why are you out here?”
“I’m doing this for my friends.”
Sunggyu breathes out and it condenses up and around the both of them. “You should do this for yourself.”
“Stupid,” he says, “but admirable, right?”
There are scrapes, long and black and jagged, in the tiles of the dorm and Hyunsoo stumbles into the practice room with dark smudges under his eyes and plasters across his fingers.
“Where are these marks coming from?” Jungryul shouts at them, all thirteen of them as they sit in the middle of the living room, surrounding the marks in a circular formation.
(Sunggyu knows the amplifier is hidden in the storage room, buried amongst the clothes the trainees who have left forgot to pack, broken fans and kettles and threadbare couches)
From the side, Sunggyu can feel Hyunsoo’s gaze land on him but Sunggyu just sits there, staring at the door on the far side. He doesn’t know he started thinking of The One With the Electric Guitar as Hyunsoo, but he does now. And he can think of a thousand reasons to raise his head to speak but when Sunggyu turns slightly to meet Hyungsoo’s eyes, he sees reflected in his eyes something a lot like what he sees in the mirror, every morning: a burning passion and the unfathomable fear about everything he is doing, will do and going to do in this industry.
“You didn’t rat me out,” Hyunsoo says later that night, when they’re standing around the amplifier and it’s a moonless Tuesday night.
Sunggyu feels like he’s been doing this forever, and living in this dorm for even longer.
“They shouldn’t depend on us for information. That’s not why we’re here. That’s not why I’m a trainee.”
Hyunsoo pushes himself up on the edge of the wall and lays down, arms folded at the back of his head as he stares up at the inky sky. “He’d like you.”
“Who?”
“Byunghee.” There’s something strange in his voice, not unlike fondness but there is also something harder, rougher. Angrier.
Sunggyu does not ask, and Hyunsoo does not elaborate.
A week before the group is finalised, Sunggyu finds Hyunsoo outside except it’s different, because the electric guitar is placed carefully at the side, leaning against the amplifier.
Hyunsoo sits with his back against Sunggyu, his legs dangling over the edge.
“Hyunsoo,” he says, and Hyunsoo nods his head without turning around. “What are you doing?”
“What’s with you and all these questions?”
The ends of his words blur away and Sunggyu walks up to him and he’s holding onto a bottle. It’s strange, not because alcohol is contraband, but because it’s a fancy-looking bottle of champagne, with its gold label and clear glass, and it looks terribly out of place in Hyunsoo’s hand.
Sunggyu shrugs and Hyunsoo takes another swing of the bottle. “Jihyuk’s going to debut soon,” he says, more aloud than for Sunggyu’s benefit.
“Which company?” Sunggyu asks, because that is more important than knowing exactly who this Jihyuk is.
“JYP.” He laughs humourlessly. “All of us did our rounds with the entertainment companies. Do-Il got into SME and I’m in Woollim.”
“When we debut, it’s not the company that matters. It’s the people in the group.”
Hyunsoo turns to look at him. “You really believe that?”
Sunggyu exhales quietly, and Hyunsoo laughs. “Idiot.”
He hits him across the shoulder. “Where are your manners?”
“Hyung, you idiot.”
It’s not that he likes being in Hyunsoo’s company, but half of his old band members have changed their numbers and the other half don’t call any more and Hyunsoo reminds him of everything and everyone he’s left behind - messy and rough and raw.
“Let’s go inside. You can’t practice with a hangover tomorrow,” he says, and he places his hands on Hyunsoo’s shoulders and turns him around. Hyunsoo pushes the bottle into his hand and as Sunggyu takes it from him, he sees a jagged scar across his palm of his right hand.
“What happened to your hand?”
“You need to stop asking questions,” Hyunsoo says, picking up his guitar and swinging it around his shoulder. He drags the amplifier in with him and when Sunggyu tries to help, he shakes his head.
Sunggyu empties the champagne over the edge of the building and by the time he turns back around, there is only silence.
His roommate’s name is Nam Woohyun. He makes it into the group.
Seven other boys, including himself, are finalised into the group: Dongwoo, Hoya, Sungyeol, Hyunsoo and Sungjong.
The management dyes their hair and they are given new clothes to wear out in public, when they’re walking from the van to the music stations. His hobbies are perfectly bland and obvious - watching movies and listening to music.
Hyunsoo even gets a new name.
Sunggyu overhears him in his room, a cellphone pressed to his ear. “Yeah, they’re making me call myself L. It’s really stupid, but at least I’ll be on stage-stop laughing,” he says, but through the crack of the door Sunggyu can see him smile.
A week after their debut, Infinite gets into their first real fight: there’s a misunderstanding between Hyunsoo and Sungyeol and the next day they’re forced by the managers to gaze into each other’s eyes and wave at the audience, standing so close their shoulders touch.
A month after debut, Hyunsoo introduces Jihyuk to the rest of the group during a special music festival, amidst the racks of costumes and organized chaos. He is polite, but distant.
A year after they debut, they win their first award on Music Bank. Hyunsoo cries the hardest and for the rest of the night, as the other members down soju and laugh about their trainee days, Hyunsoo curls up against Sunggyu and talks about Byunghee and Jihyuk even a girl, Yerim. About how he’s done everything he’s set out to achieve as an idol.
Woohyun sets down two shots of soju in front of them and they ignore the clear liquid because Hyunsoo closes his eyes contently, leaning up against Sunggyu and even though they’ve gotten so far, Sunggyu still doesn't know what to feel - about their win, about Hyunsoo, about the fact he has to this for years and years to come. And it happens almost without Sunggyu noticing: Hyunsoo’s fingers slip between his own and Hyunsoo’s skin is warm and damp but uneven, the scar too smooth beneath Sunggyu’s hand.
Infinite never makes it to their second anniversary.
+ concrit is welcomed!
Pairing: Sunggyu/Hyunsoo
Rating: G
spoilers until episode 6 of shut up! flower boy band
the one with the electric guitar
aka a very self-indulgent fic
Sunggyu does not remember them by names, but by characteristics. Examples include the Roommate, the Dancer who spends way too much time in the practice studio and not enough time in vocal training, the Quiet Trainee with his inherently sad smile, the Pretty Trainee and The One With the Electric Guitar.
He is pretty sure the last trainee’s real name is Hyunsoo. Kim Hyunsoo? Lee Hyungsoo? It doesn’t-shouldn’t matter to him, except Sunggyu has heard The One With the Electric Guitar playing in the middle of the nights, the quiet sound of something large (like an amplifier) scrapping over the tiles of the dorm before the coarse and painfully familiar sound of an electric guitar fills the night.
It has happened more than once, and Woohyun always tosses in his bed next to Sunggyu, who stares up at the ceiling as he feels the notes resonate against his skin and then deeper, to the bone.
He wonders why the boy is here, relinquishing everything to become an idol when he could be on the stage, with a guitar strapped across his chest and solid group members with never enough cash.
More often than that, it makes Sunggyu wonder why he’s here, too.
Today, Sunggyu fights with the Roommate on the way to vocal practice, during their five-minute breaks in the studio and on the way home.
“You should run more so you’ll have better breath control,” he says, looking at the Roommate who crashes down on his bed, eyes squeezed shut.
“Just because you were in a rock band doesn’t mean you have excellent breathing techniques,” he replies and it’s true but that is not the point.
“That’s not the point-”
“Hyung,” his Roommate sighs loudly and this is the problem with having a group with more than one main singer, the problem with people getting to know you almost as well as you know yourself, the problem with the promise of idol-hood. Sunggyu grabs his own running shoes from under the bed and marches out.
He pulls open the front door when The One With the Electric Guitar storms in and their shoulders hit so hard Sunggyu feels his lungs expel all the air in them. He’s left gasping at the boy, the shoes pooled around his feet.
The boy steps over him indifferently, and Sunggyu reaches out to grab him by the leg. “Hey, you don’t knock someone over and forget to apologize.”
“Let go of me.”
“You should apologize.”
He shrugs. “Sorry.”
Sunggyu tightens his grip and the boy exhales impatiently, a sound that hisses in the silence around them. He can only stare at the boy, feeling his fingers dig into the denim of the boy’s frayed jeans.
“Sorry, hyung,” The One With the Electric Guitar says, yanking his leg out of Sunggyu’s grip and disappearing into one of the rooms.
Sunggyu sits there, staring at the darkened room and he can see the boy’s silhouette moving about steadily around the room. He appears to be unzipping something in a case and Sunggyu knows it’s a guitar.
“What are you doing on the floor,” a voice says and Sunggyu turns around to find his Roommate staring down at him. His eyes are tired and he sticks out a hand, one that Sunggyu reaches for.
His touch warm and clammy and Sunggyu does not know what to feel: about himself or the Roommate or The One With the Electric Guitar; about this place and about spending the next five years as an idol, clean and polished and flawlessly manufactured down to hair colour and hobbies.
The next time he hears the familiar whine of an electric guitar in the middle of the night, Sunggyu throws on a jacket and steps carefully over the Roommate. The door creaks open silently enough and when he’s in the living room, he can see the front door is opened, a long cord connected to the power point and snaking all the way outside.
As expected, The One With the Electric Guitar is there, standing on the tiny entrance with a guitar in hand and the amplifier is on its lowest volume lest the neighbors complain and the managers find out.
Sunggyu pushes open the door open and the boy hears him because he stops strumming and everything falls into an uncomfortable silence. Even in the dim light, he can tell the boy is glaring at him. “What are you doing here?” he asks angrily, but Sunggyu can tell he’s relieved from the way his fingers loosen on the neck of his guitar that it’s only a trainee.
“I could ask you the same question.”
He scowls at Sunggyu.
“Go back to sleep. Your beauty sleep-you need it.”
“Why are you even here if all you want to do is play your guitar? You can’t dance and you can barely sing - do you know how many other boys would kill for your place?”
“We all have our reasons for being here,” he says, tone balancing out to something more blasé as he runs his fingers down the strings almost tenderly. “Even you,” he adds, looking back up at Sunggyu and the faint glow of the streetlights catch more shadows than light across his features.
“Go to sleep soon,” Sunggyu says before he leaves and the boy starts up his guitar as a response.
Sunggyu falls to sleep to the riffs of the guitar and his cellphone pressed to his chest, after scrolling through the numbers of his past band members so rapidly that their names are burned to his corneas. He never calls them. They don’t call, either.
“You look terrible,” the Roommate tells him.
Sunggyu disagrees curtly even though he knows it is true: he’s been spending most of his nights out on the front of the dorm with The One With the Electric Guitar, sitting on the ledge with his legs swinging over the edges as the boy pours his soul into his guitar.
The boy always stays out longer than Sunggyu, and whenever their schedules clash, Sunggyu always notes the boy is always a step too slow or a note too high.
It’s stupid, but admirable.
And Sunggyu does tell him, “It’s stupid, but admirable,” and the boy has to stop playing because he laughs so hard he has to hold onto the amplifier for support. Sunggyu notes he has a nice laugh-he could have a nice voice, if only he practiced.
When he finally stops laughing, he asks Sunggyu a question. “Why are you out here, watching me?”
You intrigue me, Sunggyu thinks. He says instead, “I used to be in a band as well.”
He cocks an eyebrow.
“I was the lead singer.”
“Yeah, I can tell,” he says, lips pressed together in a smirk but his eyes betray amusement.
“Why are you out here?”
“I’m doing this for my friends.”
Sunggyu breathes out and it condenses up and around the both of them. “You should do this for yourself.”
“Stupid,” he says, “but admirable, right?”
There are scrapes, long and black and jagged, in the tiles of the dorm and Hyunsoo stumbles into the practice room with dark smudges under his eyes and plasters across his fingers.
“Where are these marks coming from?” Jungryul shouts at them, all thirteen of them as they sit in the middle of the living room, surrounding the marks in a circular formation.
(Sunggyu knows the amplifier is hidden in the storage room, buried amongst the clothes the trainees who have left forgot to pack, broken fans and kettles and threadbare couches)
From the side, Sunggyu can feel Hyunsoo’s gaze land on him but Sunggyu just sits there, staring at the door on the far side. He doesn’t know he started thinking of The One With the Electric Guitar as Hyunsoo, but he does now. And he can think of a thousand reasons to raise his head to speak but when Sunggyu turns slightly to meet Hyungsoo’s eyes, he sees reflected in his eyes something a lot like what he sees in the mirror, every morning: a burning passion and the unfathomable fear about everything he is doing, will do and going to do in this industry.
“You didn’t rat me out,” Hyunsoo says later that night, when they’re standing around the amplifier and it’s a moonless Tuesday night.
Sunggyu feels like he’s been doing this forever, and living in this dorm for even longer.
“They shouldn’t depend on us for information. That’s not why we’re here. That’s not why I’m a trainee.”
Hyunsoo pushes himself up on the edge of the wall and lays down, arms folded at the back of his head as he stares up at the inky sky. “He’d like you.”
“Who?”
“Byunghee.” There’s something strange in his voice, not unlike fondness but there is also something harder, rougher. Angrier.
Sunggyu does not ask, and Hyunsoo does not elaborate.
A week before the group is finalised, Sunggyu finds Hyunsoo outside except it’s different, because the electric guitar is placed carefully at the side, leaning against the amplifier.
Hyunsoo sits with his back against Sunggyu, his legs dangling over the edge.
“Hyunsoo,” he says, and Hyunsoo nods his head without turning around. “What are you doing?”
“What’s with you and all these questions?”
The ends of his words blur away and Sunggyu walks up to him and he’s holding onto a bottle. It’s strange, not because alcohol is contraband, but because it’s a fancy-looking bottle of champagne, with its gold label and clear glass, and it looks terribly out of place in Hyunsoo’s hand.
Sunggyu shrugs and Hyunsoo takes another swing of the bottle. “Jihyuk’s going to debut soon,” he says, more aloud than for Sunggyu’s benefit.
“Which company?” Sunggyu asks, because that is more important than knowing exactly who this Jihyuk is.
“JYP.” He laughs humourlessly. “All of us did our rounds with the entertainment companies. Do-Il got into SME and I’m in Woollim.”
“When we debut, it’s not the company that matters. It’s the people in the group.”
Hyunsoo turns to look at him. “You really believe that?”
Sunggyu exhales quietly, and Hyunsoo laughs. “Idiot.”
He hits him across the shoulder. “Where are your manners?”
“Hyung, you idiot.”
It’s not that he likes being in Hyunsoo’s company, but half of his old band members have changed their numbers and the other half don’t call any more and Hyunsoo reminds him of everything and everyone he’s left behind - messy and rough and raw.
“Let’s go inside. You can’t practice with a hangover tomorrow,” he says, and he places his hands on Hyunsoo’s shoulders and turns him around. Hyunsoo pushes the bottle into his hand and as Sunggyu takes it from him, he sees a jagged scar across his palm of his right hand.
“What happened to your hand?”
“You need to stop asking questions,” Hyunsoo says, picking up his guitar and swinging it around his shoulder. He drags the amplifier in with him and when Sunggyu tries to help, he shakes his head.
Sunggyu empties the champagne over the edge of the building and by the time he turns back around, there is only silence.
His roommate’s name is Nam Woohyun. He makes it into the group.
Seven other boys, including himself, are finalised into the group: Dongwoo, Hoya, Sungyeol, Hyunsoo and Sungjong.
The management dyes their hair and they are given new clothes to wear out in public, when they’re walking from the van to the music stations. His hobbies are perfectly bland and obvious - watching movies and listening to music.
Hyunsoo even gets a new name.
Sunggyu overhears him in his room, a cellphone pressed to his ear. “Yeah, they’re making me call myself L. It’s really stupid, but at least I’ll be on stage-stop laughing,” he says, but through the crack of the door Sunggyu can see him smile.
A week after their debut, Infinite gets into their first real fight: there’s a misunderstanding between Hyunsoo and Sungyeol and the next day they’re forced by the managers to gaze into each other’s eyes and wave at the audience, standing so close their shoulders touch.
A month after debut, Hyunsoo introduces Jihyuk to the rest of the group during a special music festival, amidst the racks of costumes and organized chaos. He is polite, but distant.
A year after they debut, they win their first award on Music Bank. Hyunsoo cries the hardest and for the rest of the night, as the other members down soju and laugh about their trainee days, Hyunsoo curls up against Sunggyu and talks about Byunghee and Jihyuk even a girl, Yerim. About how he’s done everything he’s set out to achieve as an idol.
Woohyun sets down two shots of soju in front of them and they ignore the clear liquid because Hyunsoo closes his eyes contently, leaning up against Sunggyu and even though they’ve gotten so far, Sunggyu still doesn't know what to feel - about their win, about Hyunsoo, about the fact he has to this for years and years to come. And it happens almost without Sunggyu noticing: Hyunsoo’s fingers slip between his own and Hyunsoo’s skin is warm and damp but uneven, the scar too smooth beneath Sunggyu’s hand.
Infinite never makes it to their second anniversary.
+ concrit is welcomed!