(Sungyeol/L) think twice, then again
Title: think twice, then again
Pairing: Sungyeol/L
Rating: G
think twice, then again
loosely inspired by the nothing's over mv
The first one he builds breaks down after two hours: he is speaking and his mouth moves, but Sungyeol hears nothing.
The second one does not look enough like him; his eyes are too big and smile too wide and each and every time he pieces them together (plastic bones and peach-silk skin), there’s always a flaw, a reminder that what he’s building is not really real.
It’s only on his twelfth try that nothing goes wrong - a carbon copy and his voice box functions perfectly and his motor skills are seamless and his smile, his smile is what makes Sungyeol want to pick up the phone with shaky hands and call Sungjong because this smile he sees is measured yet kind, fixed in a barely curved line.
Sungyeol christens him L.
He doesn’t say much and when he smiles, it’s barely there and his eyes are distant. To most people, this would be a problem but to Sungyeol, it’s almost perfect because Myungsoo is quiet and very much as guarded as L is.
Sungyeol shows L a photo of the seven of them even before telling him his name.
“Who are they?” L asks, and his voice is smooth but emotionless. Steady and colourless. Sungyeol knows it’s just a stage, because sooner or later, L will learn how to speak like Myungsoo: lilt and volume and accent and as much as Sungyeol can teach him from memory.
He does not answer L’s question. “My name is Sungyeol,” he says, sitting down across L, who stands in front of him, unmoving. It’s not right he is standing wrong, Sungyeol thinks with a rush of despair that recedes as quickly as it comes. “I’m older than you by a year.”
“Sungyeol,” L, says slowly. “Sungyeol-hyung,” he says and it’s as though he can taste the syllables because L’s eyes brighten and this makes Sungyeol think of that last time or the first time or any of the times in-between, when it was just him and Myungsoo housed within these same walls.
“Hyung,” L says, blinking and the shine is gone. “Hyung?”
Sungyeol nods and suddenly his nose feels strange and his throat, tight. He thinks he might need to cry.
Woohyun calls that night.
“Sungyeol,” he says, and it doesn’t sound like Woohyun because the person who is speaking has a shaky, nervous voice. Woohyun is never nervous. “Hi.”
“Hey.”
“How are you?”
Sungyeol hates it when people ask stupid questions like this. He asks a stupid question in return: “Are you back in Seoul?”
“No,” the voice over the phone says, static-y and far away, “I’m still in Los Angeles. Vocal lessons are really time-consuming.”
“I know and no,” Sungyeol replies. “I’m not fine.”
There’s silence.
“Sungyeol,” Woohyun starts, “it’s not like Myungsoo is dead-”
Sungyeol puts down the phone calmly and he looks up to find L looking at him from the kitchen table, chopsticks balanced perfectly in his right hand.
“Who is Myungsoo?” L asks. Still toneless, still bland.
Sungyeol pretends he does not hear him.
His apartment walls are painted a fresh, clean beige, courtesy of Dongwoo and Sunggyu all those months ago. The sickly, chemical smell is almost all gone now but not quite, because the faintest scent still lingers in the air and it’s just another reminder of the change.
Before Myungsoo, his walls were white and with Myungsoo, his walls were still white but they were always plastered over by a myriad of photographs, some greyscale and others in colours so vivid Sungyeol couldn’t believe were real and now, after Myungsoo, his walls are beige.
“L,” Sungyeol says suddenly, “let’s paint the walls.”
He settles on a pale, barely-there yellow and while they paint, Sungyeol tells L what his favourite colour is (blue) and his favourite drink (chamomile tea) and Sungyeol gets L to practice that slight lilt, the same one Myungsoo’s voice has.
By the time the sun sets, the apartment is glowing because the rays coat the room a shimmery orange and L is illuminated, standing straight and still and he is not smiling but satisfaction radiates off him, calming and painfully familiar.
“You’re a lot better at painting than I would have pegged you to be, Myungsoo,” Sungyeol says without thinking and L turns to him, smirking, almost.
“Thank you.”
Sungyeol does not realise his slip of tongue until much later that night, when he wakes up in his room alone, a thin sheen of sweat dotting his forehead from a nightmare he cannot remember.
Sungjong calls him periodically.
“Hi, hyung!”
Sungyeol lets him do most of the talking, because Sungjong is the type who babbles on and on about the weather and his new oversized shirt he bought and that latest handphone on the market. Different coping mechanisms for different people.
Today, Sungjong is at the door, smiling brightly.
“I’ve got something to show you,” is the first thing Sungjong says and L stands inches behind Sungyeol, observing.
“Me too,” Sungyeol says and he steps aside and L moves forward. At first, all Sungjong can do is blink.
“Myungsoo-hyung?”
Sungyeol shakes his head and then Sungjong does not gape or swear or scream; he exhales loudly and shakes his head subtly, as though disappointed.
“This is L,” Sungyeol says and L nods his head in Sungjong’s direction. Sungjong stares at Sungyeol, intrigued and a little of something else that Sungyeol cannot place: awe or fright or understanding or a combination of the three?
“Can you leave L at home by himself? There’s something I want to show you at my place.”
Sungyeol hesitates.
“Go,” L says abruptly but not unkindly, causing Sungjong to start because L has mastered Myungsoo’s tone and accent and lilt and the similarities are unnerving, even for Sungyeol. “I can take care of myself.”
Sungyeol nods and Sungjong slips his hand into Sungyeol’s grip to lead him away, his touch warm and slightly damp.
Sungjong stays fifteen minutes from Sungyeol’s apartment, in a smaller but newer apartment complex.
“What do you want to show me?” Sungyeol says and it only strikes him now how mechanical his voice sounds.
“I didn’t build a robot, if that’s what you’re asking,” replies Sungjong as he twists his key in the lock and the door clicks open quietly.
And Sungyeol feels as though he cannot breathe because pasted on every available surface across the walls are photographs and words and magazine pages, from the walls in front of him to the ceiling above his head.
“For Myungsoo-hyung,” Sungjong says, pulling Sungyeol into the center of the living room and Sungyeol’s eyes swim from the overload of memories. “For when he comes back,” he adds, with an edge to his voice.
Infinite’s official photoshoots and interviews and their own candid shots, at birthdays or amusement parks or just hanging around the apartment, Sungjong hyper and Sungyeol sleepy and Myungsoo with a camera in hand.
“What if Myungsoo never comes back?”
“He will.”
“If not?” Sungyeol presses on, tone harsher than it should be because while Sungjong is not that young now, he is still so much more hopeful and naïve than the others: like Woohyun who moved to a different continent or Sunggyu who got engaged or Hoya, who tries to pretend nothing has changed.
“Then at least we’ll have your L,” Sungjong says defiantly but he says it with a smile, “won’t we?”
They would tell him living with L is not healthy, but Sungyeol doesn’t quite care what people think anymore and tonight, L is cooking dinner.
Sungyeol stands at the side, handing him soy sauce or tasting spoons or serving plates and this feels the same yet altered, as though he’s looking at things through warped glass because it’s just like him and Myungsoo, trying not to spill flour all over the table except this time it’s him and L and L is an expert cook.
L asks for some pepper and just as Sungyeol passes the thin, cylindrical container to L, their fingers touch and it’s a cruel wakeup call because L’s skin is impossibly cool.
Not-alive, not-real.
They eat a silent dinner of pineapple fried rice and when they’re done, Sungyeol clears the table and L asks, “I look exactly like that guy in that photo you showed me on the first day. That guy in the center. Myungsoo.”
Sungyeol nods.
He does not press and Sungyeol rinses the dishes before loading them into the dishwasher in the silence. Wash, rinse, repeat.
L wipes the table down with a damp cloth: swish, swish, swish.
“I miss him,” Sungyeol says just, quietly enough for L to ignore and it helps, slightly, to admit this to someone-no wait, something. He places the last dish into the dishwasher before he feels L’s hand on his shoulder, still cool but he’s not thinking of the temperature of his skin because Myungsoo is looking at him and it’s as though he understands.
They fall asleep on the couch that night; Sungyeol with his head on L’s shoulder and this is something that he had never done with Myungsoo.
“I’m going to see Myungsoo-hyung today.”
“Great,” Sungyeol says dully.
“I want you to come along.”
“No, thanks.”
“Next week,” Sungjong says forcefully and Sungyeol wants to smile because maybe Sungjong has grown up; he definitely isn’t that same wide-eyed, bubbly boy he was and perhaps it’s a good thing during times like this.
“Maybe,” he says vaguely and he hears Sungjong exhale before hanging up. Sungyeol turns and there’s faint music from L’s room where he’s practicing the piano.
He stands, walks towards the room and knocks before twisting the doorknob open. It was Myungsoo’s room and everything is exactly the same: same books on the same shelves and the same clothes hanging in the closet and even the same coffee cup, set upon the table.
L turns to look at him all while he continues playing, the music enveloping the usual silence that is present whenever they’re together. Sungyeol finds it amazing he has forgotten that Myungsoo used to play the piano.
And even though Sungyeol knows that he’s going to regret it - maybe, no, definitely going to regret it, he does it anyway.
He leans across the piano and kisses L and it doesn’t matter that his lips are frigid, because it was almost exactly like the first time with Myungsoo and his ice-cold lips because they had just demolished a tub of ice cream while watching the news.
L tastes like iron and nothing like sweet cream but that’s alright too, because it’s like that last time Sungyeol kissed Myungsoo and there was that faint tang of blood on his tongue.
Maybe Myungsoo isn’t the only one going crazy.
Myungsoo has his own room in a private hospital at the edge of Seoul.
He’s not sick in that way most people associate with hospitals and no, Sungyeol remembers telling Hoya, he does not have a mental illness. He just…cannot remember. Anything. Anyone.
Sungyeol recalls pacing around the hospital waiting lounge, surfing the internet on someone’s iPad (he can’t recall who that person is now, because the faces at the hospital blend into two categories - the forced calm of doctors and nurses and the unbridled terror of everyone else) about retrograde and anterograde amnesia.
Retrograde amnesia meant not being able to remember anything before the fall. Anterograde meant not being to remember anything after the fall. In short, he would not even be able to remember his own name, be it L or Myungsoo.
By the time he finishes telling L all this, the clock blinks three-fifteen. “You should go to bed,” L says and Sungyeol trudges into his room, limbs as heavy as his eyelids even though his brain is whirring far too quickly for sleep anytime soon.
Sungyeol closes his eyes anyway and when he turns, he feels a body next to him and it doesn’t really matter that the person is cold or that when Sungyeol places a hand across L’s chest, there’s absolutely no beat beneath the skin.
He closes his eyes and breathes in and out slowly as L lays down next to him, soundless, and Sungyeol counts the minutes until the sun breaks through the horizon. He can decide what to do next then: call Sungjong to visit Myungsoo together or maybe he could visit Myungsoo alone or maybe he wouldn't visit Myungsoo at all, because he'll leave that for the next day. Maybe he could learn to love L or maybe he would deactivate him and move on.
Maybe.
concrit is welcomed!
Pairing: Sungyeol/L
Rating: G
think twice, then again
loosely inspired by the nothing's over mv
The first one he builds breaks down after two hours: he is speaking and his mouth moves, but Sungyeol hears nothing.
The second one does not look enough like him; his eyes are too big and smile too wide and each and every time he pieces them together (plastic bones and peach-silk skin), there’s always a flaw, a reminder that what he’s building is not really real.
It’s only on his twelfth try that nothing goes wrong - a carbon copy and his voice box functions perfectly and his motor skills are seamless and his smile, his smile is what makes Sungyeol want to pick up the phone with shaky hands and call Sungjong because this smile he sees is measured yet kind, fixed in a barely curved line.
Sungyeol christens him L.
He doesn’t say much and when he smiles, it’s barely there and his eyes are distant. To most people, this would be a problem but to Sungyeol, it’s almost perfect because Myungsoo is quiet and very much as guarded as L is.
Sungyeol shows L a photo of the seven of them even before telling him his name.
“Who are they?” L asks, and his voice is smooth but emotionless. Steady and colourless. Sungyeol knows it’s just a stage, because sooner or later, L will learn how to speak like Myungsoo: lilt and volume and accent and as much as Sungyeol can teach him from memory.
He does not answer L’s question. “My name is Sungyeol,” he says, sitting down across L, who stands in front of him, unmoving. It’s not right he is standing wrong, Sungyeol thinks with a rush of despair that recedes as quickly as it comes. “I’m older than you by a year.”
“Sungyeol,” L, says slowly. “Sungyeol-hyung,” he says and it’s as though he can taste the syllables because L’s eyes brighten and this makes Sungyeol think of that last time or the first time or any of the times in-between, when it was just him and Myungsoo housed within these same walls.
“Hyung,” L says, blinking and the shine is gone. “Hyung?”
Sungyeol nods and suddenly his nose feels strange and his throat, tight. He thinks he might need to cry.
Woohyun calls that night.
“Sungyeol,” he says, and it doesn’t sound like Woohyun because the person who is speaking has a shaky, nervous voice. Woohyun is never nervous. “Hi.”
“Hey.”
“How are you?”
Sungyeol hates it when people ask stupid questions like this. He asks a stupid question in return: “Are you back in Seoul?”
“No,” the voice over the phone says, static-y and far away, “I’m still in Los Angeles. Vocal lessons are really time-consuming.”
“I know and no,” Sungyeol replies. “I’m not fine.”
There’s silence.
“Sungyeol,” Woohyun starts, “it’s not like Myungsoo is dead-”
Sungyeol puts down the phone calmly and he looks up to find L looking at him from the kitchen table, chopsticks balanced perfectly in his right hand.
“Who is Myungsoo?” L asks. Still toneless, still bland.
Sungyeol pretends he does not hear him.
His apartment walls are painted a fresh, clean beige, courtesy of Dongwoo and Sunggyu all those months ago. The sickly, chemical smell is almost all gone now but not quite, because the faintest scent still lingers in the air and it’s just another reminder of the change.
Before Myungsoo, his walls were white and with Myungsoo, his walls were still white but they were always plastered over by a myriad of photographs, some greyscale and others in colours so vivid Sungyeol couldn’t believe were real and now, after Myungsoo, his walls are beige.
“L,” Sungyeol says suddenly, “let’s paint the walls.”
He settles on a pale, barely-there yellow and while they paint, Sungyeol tells L what his favourite colour is (blue) and his favourite drink (chamomile tea) and Sungyeol gets L to practice that slight lilt, the same one Myungsoo’s voice has.
By the time the sun sets, the apartment is glowing because the rays coat the room a shimmery orange and L is illuminated, standing straight and still and he is not smiling but satisfaction radiates off him, calming and painfully familiar.
“You’re a lot better at painting than I would have pegged you to be, Myungsoo,” Sungyeol says without thinking and L turns to him, smirking, almost.
“Thank you.”
Sungyeol does not realise his slip of tongue until much later that night, when he wakes up in his room alone, a thin sheen of sweat dotting his forehead from a nightmare he cannot remember.
Sungjong calls him periodically.
“Hi, hyung!”
Sungyeol lets him do most of the talking, because Sungjong is the type who babbles on and on about the weather and his new oversized shirt he bought and that latest handphone on the market. Different coping mechanisms for different people.
Today, Sungjong is at the door, smiling brightly.
“I’ve got something to show you,” is the first thing Sungjong says and L stands inches behind Sungyeol, observing.
“Me too,” Sungyeol says and he steps aside and L moves forward. At first, all Sungjong can do is blink.
“Myungsoo-hyung?”
Sungyeol shakes his head and then Sungjong does not gape or swear or scream; he exhales loudly and shakes his head subtly, as though disappointed.
“This is L,” Sungyeol says and L nods his head in Sungjong’s direction. Sungjong stares at Sungyeol, intrigued and a little of something else that Sungyeol cannot place: awe or fright or understanding or a combination of the three?
“Can you leave L at home by himself? There’s something I want to show you at my place.”
Sungyeol hesitates.
“Go,” L says abruptly but not unkindly, causing Sungjong to start because L has mastered Myungsoo’s tone and accent and lilt and the similarities are unnerving, even for Sungyeol. “I can take care of myself.”
Sungyeol nods and Sungjong slips his hand into Sungyeol’s grip to lead him away, his touch warm and slightly damp.
Sungjong stays fifteen minutes from Sungyeol’s apartment, in a smaller but newer apartment complex.
“What do you want to show me?” Sungyeol says and it only strikes him now how mechanical his voice sounds.
“I didn’t build a robot, if that’s what you’re asking,” replies Sungjong as he twists his key in the lock and the door clicks open quietly.
And Sungyeol feels as though he cannot breathe because pasted on every available surface across the walls are photographs and words and magazine pages, from the walls in front of him to the ceiling above his head.
“For Myungsoo-hyung,” Sungjong says, pulling Sungyeol into the center of the living room and Sungyeol’s eyes swim from the overload of memories. “For when he comes back,” he adds, with an edge to his voice.
Infinite’s official photoshoots and interviews and their own candid shots, at birthdays or amusement parks or just hanging around the apartment, Sungjong hyper and Sungyeol sleepy and Myungsoo with a camera in hand.
“What if Myungsoo never comes back?”
“He will.”
“If not?” Sungyeol presses on, tone harsher than it should be because while Sungjong is not that young now, he is still so much more hopeful and naïve than the others: like Woohyun who moved to a different continent or Sunggyu who got engaged or Hoya, who tries to pretend nothing has changed.
“Then at least we’ll have your L,” Sungjong says defiantly but he says it with a smile, “won’t we?”
They would tell him living with L is not healthy, but Sungyeol doesn’t quite care what people think anymore and tonight, L is cooking dinner.
Sungyeol stands at the side, handing him soy sauce or tasting spoons or serving plates and this feels the same yet altered, as though he’s looking at things through warped glass because it’s just like him and Myungsoo, trying not to spill flour all over the table except this time it’s him and L and L is an expert cook.
L asks for some pepper and just as Sungyeol passes the thin, cylindrical container to L, their fingers touch and it’s a cruel wakeup call because L’s skin is impossibly cool.
Not-alive, not-real.
They eat a silent dinner of pineapple fried rice and when they’re done, Sungyeol clears the table and L asks, “I look exactly like that guy in that photo you showed me on the first day. That guy in the center. Myungsoo.”
Sungyeol nods.
He does not press and Sungyeol rinses the dishes before loading them into the dishwasher in the silence. Wash, rinse, repeat.
L wipes the table down with a damp cloth: swish, swish, swish.
“I miss him,” Sungyeol says just, quietly enough for L to ignore and it helps, slightly, to admit this to someone-no wait, something. He places the last dish into the dishwasher before he feels L’s hand on his shoulder, still cool but he’s not thinking of the temperature of his skin because Myungsoo is looking at him and it’s as though he understands.
They fall asleep on the couch that night; Sungyeol with his head on L’s shoulder and this is something that he had never done with Myungsoo.
“I’m going to see Myungsoo-hyung today.”
“Great,” Sungyeol says dully.
“I want you to come along.”
“No, thanks.”
“Next week,” Sungjong says forcefully and Sungyeol wants to smile because maybe Sungjong has grown up; he definitely isn’t that same wide-eyed, bubbly boy he was and perhaps it’s a good thing during times like this.
“Maybe,” he says vaguely and he hears Sungjong exhale before hanging up. Sungyeol turns and there’s faint music from L’s room where he’s practicing the piano.
He stands, walks towards the room and knocks before twisting the doorknob open. It was Myungsoo’s room and everything is exactly the same: same books on the same shelves and the same clothes hanging in the closet and even the same coffee cup, set upon the table.
L turns to look at him all while he continues playing, the music enveloping the usual silence that is present whenever they’re together. Sungyeol finds it amazing he has forgotten that Myungsoo used to play the piano.
And even though Sungyeol knows that he’s going to regret it - maybe, no, definitely going to regret it, he does it anyway.
He leans across the piano and kisses L and it doesn’t matter that his lips are frigid, because it was almost exactly like the first time with Myungsoo and his ice-cold lips because they had just demolished a tub of ice cream while watching the news.
L tastes like iron and nothing like sweet cream but that’s alright too, because it’s like that last time Sungyeol kissed Myungsoo and there was that faint tang of blood on his tongue.
Maybe Myungsoo isn’t the only one going crazy.
Myungsoo has his own room in a private hospital at the edge of Seoul.
He’s not sick in that way most people associate with hospitals and no, Sungyeol remembers telling Hoya, he does not have a mental illness. He just…cannot remember. Anything. Anyone.
Sungyeol recalls pacing around the hospital waiting lounge, surfing the internet on someone’s iPad (he can’t recall who that person is now, because the faces at the hospital blend into two categories - the forced calm of doctors and nurses and the unbridled terror of everyone else) about retrograde and anterograde amnesia.
Retrograde amnesia meant not being able to remember anything before the fall. Anterograde meant not being to remember anything after the fall. In short, he would not even be able to remember his own name, be it L or Myungsoo.
By the time he finishes telling L all this, the clock blinks three-fifteen. “You should go to bed,” L says and Sungyeol trudges into his room, limbs as heavy as his eyelids even though his brain is whirring far too quickly for sleep anytime soon.
Sungyeol closes his eyes anyway and when he turns, he feels a body next to him and it doesn’t really matter that the person is cold or that when Sungyeol places a hand across L’s chest, there’s absolutely no beat beneath the skin.
He closes his eyes and breathes in and out slowly as L lays down next to him, soundless, and Sungyeol counts the minutes until the sun breaks through the horizon. He can decide what to do next then: call Sungjong to visit Myungsoo together or maybe he could visit Myungsoo alone or maybe he wouldn't visit Myungsoo at all, because he'll leave that for the next day. Maybe he could learn to love L or maybe he would deactivate him and move on.
Maybe.
concrit is welcomed!