lui, il chantait, et j'ai compris presque rien, for melonpink
Title: lui, il chantait, et j'ai compris presque rien
Recipient: melonpink
Pairing: Seunghoon/Mino
Rating: PG-13
Summary: It's their special thing, this song, and it probably means more than what they think it does.
Notes: Wow, I can't believe this is finally done! I haven't written or read WINNER in so long that this exchange was a challenge (but a welcome one). Dear recipient, I hope you like this, even if it's probably more serious than what you were expecting from your prompt. Also, excuse how cheesy it is!
“Hyung, look at what my friend just sent me,” Taehyun snickers, passing over his phone to Minho.
They’re all gathered around an enormous pot of instant noodles (they don’t have any public schedules for the next day; bloated faces can be forgiven). Seungyoon rolls his eyes and snaps his chopsticks in warning at the youngest.
“Put your phone away, maknae,” he says imperiously, “we’re having a meal together.”
Taehyun ignores him, eyes focused on Minho. The latter clicks open the attachment on Taehyun’s screen and nearly drops the phone into his little bowl of noodles in shock.
“Oi, watch it,” Taehyun snaps, retrieving his phone quickly. “Just because you’re embarrassed-”
“What is it?” Jinwoo asks, interested, leaning over the maknae to sneak a glance at his phone. “I can’t see anything; give this to me.” He plucks the phone out of Taehyun’s hands easily and moves to share the screen with Seunghoon, who’d also looked up at the commotion.
When the two start snickering, Seungyoon starts whining. “Tell me what’s so funny,” he demands, already peeved about the disrespect of his maknae. “Hyung-”
“Hugeboy Minho over here,” Jinwoo snickers, prodding the boy with a socked foot, “apparently fucking hates ants.”
Seungyoon blinks. “So do I?” he says, confused. “I don’t get what’s so funny.”
“He wrote a whole rap over it,” Taehyun elaborates, not bothering to hide his smirk. Minho frowns and points his spoon at Taehyun in warning. “Fuck da ants, motherfuckers,” he finishes, sounding remarkably similar to the rapper’s deep voiced rasp.
“Maknae, you are a shit stirrer,” Minho says slowly, eyes narrowing as Taehyun just flashes him a benign smile. “Ungrateful little shit. Not everyone was lucky enough to start out in a dorm like this,” he says, gesturing the swanky apartment YG houses them in.
“Don’t be bitter, hyung. You’ve got experience. Which means we can put you in charge of pest control now,” Seungyoon crows, obnoxious laugh echoing in the small room as Jinwoo chuckles and Taehyun suppresses a grin.
“Attacked by my own members!” Minho scowls, mock disgust on his face. “I hope you all wake up one day with ants crawling through your underwear drawers.”
Seunghoon nudges him. “Hey, I didn’t do anything,” he protests. “I mean, I may have laughed a little but it was mostly out of sympathy!”
“Yeah, right,” Minho huffs, still annoyed. He’d tried to leave the past decidedly behind him and hated having his lowlier beginnings brought up around his new group. Call it pride, whatever, but he preferred to have his sights set solely on WINNER and the future.
“You’re not the only one who started at the bottom,” Seunghoon says lowly. The others have moved on already, back to slurping loudly on their noodles and watching a viral video on Taehyun’s phone. “And it’s kind of cute, to be honest.”
“Cute,” Minho repeats, nose wrinkling. “Exactly what I love to be called.”
“Take the compliment, brat,” Seunghoon laughs, swatting at Minho’s head. “Besides, I shudder to imagine what you write about us, considering your feelings towards ants.”
“I don’t release it for that reason,” Minho snips back, sticking his tongue out. Seunghoon rolls his eyes and plops more noodles into his bowl.
“Just eat, kid,” he says, “you’re not the only one who unsavoury thoughts. Towards ants.”
Seunghoon looks away with a smile, asking for the soda bottle from Jinwoo. Minho doesn’t answer but stares at him for long afterwards.
Schedules pick up soon afterwards, and even though they’re not promoting there’s always something to do. Seungyoon, the eternally lazy one of the group, hasn’t properly unpacked his carrier in months, and it’s evident in the smell.
It’s one of those mornings where they’re shaken out of bed at three in the morning to get dressed. The airports are always less crowded earlier in the morning and there’s no need to media play for this particular schedule, so by four they’re shuffled out of the dorm and into the van.
A quick game of rock, paper, scissors decides the seating arrangements, save for Jinwoo who’d claimed shotgun under eldest hyung status. Somehow, Minho finds himself shoved into the backseat where there’s less leg room. It’s not too bad, though, because Seunghoon’s just as unlucky. Seunghoon’s taste in music is less offensive than the other ballad types, and seeing as he forgot to charge his phone he’ll have to beg for an earbud to share.
“Hyung, let me listen with you,” he demands the second Seunghoon gets his seat belt buckled, hand out expectantly.
Seunghoon freezes for a moment and then smirks. “I don’t know if you want to listen to what I’m listening to, Minho-yah,” he teases.
“Anything’s better than that,” Minho replies, wrinkling his nose as Taehyun settles into the seat in front of him, doing vocal runs to warm up. It’s not that it sounds bad, but he hears it often enough that four in the morning should be off-limits for this kind of thing.
Seunghoon hums but hands over one of the earbuds, eyes keen on the reaction.
Minho doesn’t get it immediately, but then his own voice starts up and his reaction is probably more violent than what the cramped space really should allow for.
“What the fuck,” he splutters, yanking so that the earphone falls out onto the seat between them. “Why are you listening to this?”
Seunghoon snickers, reclaiming his earphone. “I actually like it,” he answers honestly. “You sound good; I don’t get why you’re so embarrassed about it.”
It’s still dark out thankfully, so Minho’s flush is masked. “I’m not,” he says through gritted teeth. “And it’s not - it’s not because I don’t sound good, or whatever.” He can’t quite meet Seunghoon’s eyes.
“Then what is it? You know BIGBANG sunbaenims used to live with rats, right? And look where they are now. They don’t have a problem admitting it. It builds character.”
“But that’s exactly it,” Minho stresses. “Look at where they are now. Top of the game. And I’m, I’m just. Not.”
“We’re not exactly struggling to get by either,” Seunghoon points out, eyes narrowing.
“I know. I know we’re not. It’s just.” He bites his lip, fidgeting with the hems of his shirt. He doesn’t like to bring this stuff up. “Who knows. Maybe I’m not cut out for this, maybe I’m not good enough, maybe this was all just a fluke and I belong there-”
“Hey, stop that,” Seunghoon says sharply, frowning. “You’re not going to disrespect the rest of us just because you’re too insecure to realize you’re talented as fuck and deserve to be here like the rest of us.”
“I didn’t mean it like that,” Minho says, voice tiny and every inch scolded.
Seunghoon relaxes. “I know you didn’t. Really, dude, I get that you might get these doubts now and then, we all do. But you gotta remember where we are now, and how we got here. In your case, rapping about ants is part of it. You can’t let that get you down.”
Minho feels his anxiety settling at Seunghoon’s words, replaced with a strange feeling of comfort. It’s not often that they’re serious like this, the two moodmakers of the group, but somehow it still feels right.
“You’re right,” he allows. “But maybe I should just keep looking to the future. Go up,” he mumbles, tacking on the words at the end in a half-hearted attempt to lighten the mood.
“Maybe you should write something new then,” Seunghoon suggests, smile playing on his lips. “Something a little more glamorous.”
Minho grins. “Maybe I will.”
They’re assigned hotel rooms, as always. Sometimes Minho misses the fun they used to be allowed during WINNERTV filming, but he also does appreciate having the cameras off during his downtime. This time, he’s paired up with Seunghoon, which only serves to bring back the nostalgia even more. It’s better than being paired up with Jinwoo, at any rate; the baby-faced hyung snores and he’s a light sleeper.
It’s after his shower, towel wrapped loose around his lips, that he walks out to Seunghoon bent over the desk in the room, scribbling something onto the stationary that’s always left out in hotels.
“What are you doing, hyung?” he asks, walking over so that he can peer down, uncaring of the water he’s dripping onto Seunghoon’s shoulder.
Seunghoon leans back to admire his handiwork, moving so that Mino could see as well. From what is still legible against the many crossed out lines, it looks like lyrics.
“You’re writing?” Minho asks, eyebrows lifting in surprise. “I thought you weren’t really into all of this.” He picks up the paper, holding it close in order to make out the messy characters; Seunghoon didn’t necessarily have the greatest handwriting either.
Seunghoon shrugs, rubbing a hand on the back of his neck. “I’m not as good as you, obviously,” he explains. “I was just messing around. I don’t know.” He trails off, and Minho can sense his rising self-consciousness the longer he takes reading the paper.
“It’s good,” he assures. “Ants, though?”
“From earlier,” Seunghoon clarifies. “On the car. I just thought maybe we could do it together. So that if it fails miserably you wouldn’t be the only one to take the fall. It’s dumb, I know-”
“It’s not,” Minho interrupts, eyes snapping up to catch Seunghoon’s. “It’s - Hyung, you didn’t have to.”
A group put together the way they had been, moments of intense appreciation for one another are far from rare. It’s in the way that Seungyoon doesn’t sleep for days at a time because he’s trying to perfect their music one note at a time. In the way that Taehyun spends countless hours coaching Jinwoo, always with unending patience. But this, this feels different.
“I know I didn’t.” Seunghoon holds his stare and there’s something. They’re bandmates, yes, and friends. But there’s something and it makes Minho’s breath catch minutely in his throat. “I wanted to.”
The words are simple but Minho feels like he’s missing half the sentence, half the meaning. The heaviness of them settles somewhere deep in his stomach and for now he’ll let them linger there.
“Thanks,” is all he says, and it feels inadequate somehow. “It means a lot.”
Seunghoon smiles in response. “Hey, it’s not a big deal,” he says, laughing. He lets the tension he hadn’t even noticed break. “Just for fun. But I think I’ll take a little break, since the shower’s finally cleared up.”
Minho grimaces; “I didn’t take that long,” he protests.
“Long enough for me to fill that whole paper,” Seunghoon points out, shaking his head and clapping Minho on the back as he grabs a towel he’d laid out on his bed. “I hope you at least left me some shampoo.”
“Some,” Minho allows and he grins at the pointed look Seunghoon sends him before he shuts the door the bathroom. The paper is still in his hand, a little smudged from the dampness of his hand. He tucks it away carefully in his wallet and doesn’t quite realize that he’s already thinking up the next couple of lines in his head.
It becomes a bit of a habit, afterwards. Enough that Minho always has a pen on hand with him wherever he goes. In the moments when they’re not busy memorizing a script their manager had handed them half an hour before they appear, his mind will drift towards whatever they’d come up with last. Sometimes he can think of something clever to come next, sometimes he’s improving on something they’ve already penned.
They, because true to his word Seunghoon spends just as much time on their impromptu project as Minho does. They keep it to themselves, and the meaningful looks Minho shares with Seunghoon make everything feel more intimate, more personal.
“Maknae, give that to me,” Seunghoon demands, reaching out a hand expectantly at the gum wrapper Taehyun is about to throw out.
“Okay?” Taehyun obeys without objection but lets his judgment show plainly on his face. “You’re weird,” he says afterwards, watching with narrowed eyes as Seunghoon pulls a pen out of nowhere to make scribble minutely on the non-wax side. “Can I see?”
“No,” Seunghoon says, smirking when Minho says the same thing simultaneously. Taehyun’s eyes dart back and forth between the two older boys, disgruntled at being ganged up on. “No, you can’t, beloved maknae.”
Taehyun’s eyebrows furrow in disapproval as Seunghoon passes the little slip of paper to Minho indiscreetly. “Passing notes is for third graders,” he says snidely.
“Stop being so jealous, Taehyunnie, it doesn’t suit you,” Minho advises. “Just let hyung-deul plan your surprise birthday party in peace.”
“Quick question before you leave, though; what kind of loot bags do you like?” Seunghoon quips.
Taehyun stalks away then, off to find a hyung who won’t make fun of him. Minho’s lips twitch up into a grin as Seunghoon bursts into laughter at the sight, and the elbow that he gets nudged into his arm feels more than just friendly because of the wrapper he’s got clutched in his hand.
His wallet soon becomes littered with the scraps of paper and it’s starting to make him worry about losing anything. He doesn’t empty it out, though, just tucks them more securely into the leather folds. It makes him feel better to have their little project, his baby, on him beside the pen in his pocket.
And even when there isn’t paper, there’s always skin.
“Minho-yah, come here,” Seunghoon whispers so as not to wake up Seungyoon sleeping on their left. Minho scoots closer and offers his arm in recognition when he sees Seunghoon pull out a ballpoint.
“Tickles?” he asks as his makes more careful strokes along Minho’s arms.
“No, it feels kind of nice.” Minho leaves out the part about how it isn’t really the pen dragging along his skin that feels good, but more the proximity, Seunghoon bent closer and his breath lightly fanning over his arm. It’s the firm but gentle grip Seunghoon’s has on his wrist to steady the arm, the way Seunghoon’s eyebrows are furrowed in concentration. “What are you writing this time?”
“Patience is a virtue,” Seunghoon replies, corner of his lip raised. He’s gotten much better at this lyric thing, Minho’s noticed, and he can’t help but think that maybe it’s because he’s mulling them over in his mind for longer.
(There’s a small, small part of him that realizes how often he must be on Seunghoon’s mind, if that’s the case. There’s an even smaller part that doesn’t know why that makes him feel so good.)
“Don’t smudge them,” Seunghoon cautions when he finishes, Minho craning his head to get a good look at the script running the length of his arms.
“Hyung, this doesn’t even make sense,” Minho complains, reading the sentence over. “I thought we were writing about ants?”
“Hush,” Seunghoon says, eyes trained on Seungyoon’s stirring form. “Pull your sleeve down, Minho.”
He does, but the words are still fresh in his mind. Seunghoon isn’t one to quote sappy love lines from the ballads that play during their favourite dramas, so he doesn’t know where the one written on his arm came from. Something about unrequited love and invisible boundaries and the way that Seunghoon doesn’t look at him afterwards makes it suddenly a little hard to breathe.
Things all go to shit on the same day and honestly, it fucking sucks.
The day begins with the realization that he can’t find his wallet.
He’s got a Post-It with the latest addition to their almost completed song, the adhesive beginning to wear off from where it’s stuck to his thumb. He can hear the rest of the members start their morning routines from outside, can hear Jinwoo singing in the shower for everyone to hear. They’re due to leave in half an hour, and every minute he spends tearing his room apart looking for his wallet lessens the time he’ll have either in the shower or eating.
It’s a knock on his door that distracts him, and when he opens it he finds Taehyun there, holding a laundry basket full of unfolded clothes.
“Manager-hyung told me to give these to you,” Taehyun informs him drily, all but shoving the basket into Minho’s arms. “You should fold them before they got all wrinkly; you know you won’t have time to iron them later.”
Taehyun leaves after that, responsibility fulfilled, and doesn’t even notice the way Minho’s face had frozen midsentence.
His suspicions are confirmed when he finds his wallet at the bottom of the basket, freshly laundered and utterly devoid of any of the scraps of paper he’s been collecting for weeks.
He doesn’t even have the time to mourn his loss because he’s being rushed into the company van. Seunghoon smiles at him as he gets in but Minho’s still reeling, still stunned, and can’t meet his eyes.
He hadn’t realized just how fragile everything had been, and now it was all lost. His job as an idol requires him to put on a mask and pretend like everything is fine, but everyone notices something is off with his interview answers that day. No one asks, because they know not to pry.
The hurt in Seunghoon’s eyes when Minho flinches away from his worried touch probably feels the worst.
Except it isn’t. Isn’t the worst.
No, the worst comes a couple of hours, on the car ride home, and the migraine in his head that’s been raging all day has got him even more on edge than before.
Seungyoon and Seunghoon are talking in the seats in front of him, loud enough that it’s hard to ignore, no matter how much he wants to.
“Stop texting your girlfriend and pay attention to me,” Seungyoon snaps at one point, irritated by Seunghoon’s busy fingers over his phone. “You didn’t even laugh at my joke.”
“That’s because it wasn’t funny, Seungyoonie,” Seunghoon replies absentmindedly, looking up briefly to flash him a smile.
Seungyoon huffs, offended, but Minho hasn’t caught up yet. He’s still on that first line. Your girlfriend, he hears, echoing.
“You have a girlfriend?” he blurts out before he can help it, and fuck, he doesn’t mean the accusation in his voice, the hurt.
Taehyun, sitting beside him, looks at him. There’s something in his eyes that Minho doesn’t like, but he can’t focus on that because Seunghoon is finally putting his phone down and the look in his eyes is easily recognizable.
Apologies.
Yes, this hurts, and he’s beginning to get why. He won’t admit it, though, of course he won’t, because that would make it real, and that would make the pain that’s piercing through his insides something intimate, something personal.
The dynamic of the group changes after that day, albeit by a small amount. But it’s enough to be noticeable, enough to attract the attention of the members.
Minho becomes more withdrawn and Seunghoon more loud, more boisterous, and so much more attached to the other three.
Luckily, there’s too much to be done in preparation for their upcoming comeback to wallow in depressing thoughts and feelings. It’s easy to bury the pain when Minho’s barely getting any sleep because of the dance rehearsals, the recordings, the concept planning, and endless, endless practice. It’s easy to ignore the gnawing in the pit of his stomach when he’s too busy thinking about when they’re going to be allowed to eat and forcing his eyes open so that their dance trainer doesn’t think he’s slacking.
It’s not easy at all, though, to hold back all of these feelings when he’s hunched over his desk late at night, when he should be catching up on precious sleep. He’s got sheaves of papers messily spread all over, angry black and blue ink scrawled across full pages. It’s different when he’s writing songs by himself. He doesn’t have to wait for anyone else, doesn’t have to get anyone’s approval.
But everything he’s writing is terrible. It’s emotional and messy and irrational and half the time the rhythm is off because he’s too busy trying to put thought to paper to care. It doesn’t make him feel happy and there’s nothing special about it. They’re nothing he wants to keep, nothing he wants to keep tucked away in his wallet in his back pocket.
He hears about Seunghoon’s breakup one day and it doesn’t do anything for him. Doesn’t change the feeling of betrayal, the feeling of not being good enough.
The pen has long since been sloughed off in the shower but the words Seunghoon had inked onto his arm from all those weeks ago are still branded into his mind.
“Minho-yah,” Seunghoon says one day, later, when they’re on a short break right before the comeback to regain strength. “Minho, I want to show you something.”
The endearment sounds foreign in Minho’s ears since it’s been so long since he’s last heard it. It’s been a long time since Seunghoon’s actually tried to make conversation, for that matter, and the thought doesn’t sit well with him.
“What is it, hyung?” he asks, following Seunghoon into the recording studio. “Did you finally figure out what’s wrong with the second verse of the song?”
Seunghoon looks nervous, eyes shifting and hands twisting at his sides. “No, it isn’t that. It’s, um, something else.” He gestures for Minho to take a seat and takes one as well, opposite. “I’ve been meaning to show you for a while, but. And I wanted to make it a surprise. It’s probably not.” The words tumble awkwardly out of his mouth and it makes Minho want to smile. A flustered Seunghoon is a cute Seunghoon, even if he hasn’t been very himself lately at all. “I’ll just show you.”
Minho’s curiosity is piqued when Seunghoon pushes the play button and an unfamiliar beat starts playing in the little studio. It’s not one from any of their solo projects, or one off their album. The instrumental in the background is foreign as well.
But the moment he hears Seunghoon’s voice start playing over the speakers he recognizes what this is. How could he not, when the words that are hitting the beats at the perfect times are the same ones he’d tried to make out on that first night in the hotel, written on a piece of hotel stationary. And the ones that follow, ones that he’d come up with himself in the middle of lunch the next day.
On and on the song goes and Minho is speechless. Completely and utterly.
“How?” he asks the second it’s over, closing on unfamiliar lyrics, ones that he hadn’t written nor had he ever seen Seunghoon write. “I thought - I lost them. In the laundry. I lost them and-”
“You really thought I’d be that careless?” Seunghoon answers. “Especially after that time we ruined Jinwoo-hyung’s passport? I found your wallet, Minho, and had to save a couple of these little scraps from falling out. It was really too full, you know.” He pushes a small box towards him, and upon opening it Minho finds all of the papers he’d collected, all of their lyrics that he’d saved so preciously.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” Minho demands, his relief manifesting as anger. “I thought they were all gone, that I’d ruined everything, and all along you had them. I thought you’d hate me, hyung.”
“You really think I could hate you, Minho?” Seunghoon snaps. “After all I’ve done for you, and you never clued in? I could never hate you. Especially not now, not when I’m finally coming to terms with the fact that I like you more than I should.”
“You what?”
Minho’s eyes widen, mouth dropping open in shock. He didn’t hear right, he can’t have heard right because -
Seunghoon’s jaw shuts abruptly, the irritation in his face disappearing, to be replaced with trepidation. “I-You heard me,” he says, nervous all over again. “I like you. In a non-platonic way. And I’m kind of desperately hoping the last couple of weeks I spent working on this song makes you even the littlest bit open to maybe giving me a chance.”
“Hyung,” Minho says, and the words are a little bit echoey to him. Mostly because he’s too busy being overwhelmed to pay proper attention. “Hyung, you’re an idiot. You’re the one who went ahead and got a girlfriend on me and tore my heart to shreds.”
“I did not,” Seunghoon protests. “I only agreed so that Seungyoon would get off my back. I was actually just talking with an out-of-house producer about helping me with this track, since, you know, it was supposed to be a secret.”
“God, hyung, I can’t believe…” he trails off, at a loss for words. “I can’t believe you’d do all of this. For me. You didn’t have to.”
The smile on Seunghoon’s face is so gentle, and so, so familiar. As are his next words.
“I know I didn’t,” he says. “I wanted to.”
And now Minho understands why the words felt so much heavier than he’d initially thought, why he felt like he’d been missing half the meaning.
“Seunghoon-hyung, I love you, too,” Minho says, finally realizing, and the way Seunghoon’s face lights up is worth everything.
Recipient: melonpink
Pairing: Seunghoon/Mino
Rating: PG-13
Summary: It's their special thing, this song, and it probably means more than what they think it does.
Notes: Wow, I can't believe this is finally done! I haven't written or read WINNER in so long that this exchange was a challenge (but a welcome one). Dear recipient, I hope you like this, even if it's probably more serious than what you were expecting from your prompt. Also, excuse how cheesy it is!
“Hyung, look at what my friend just sent me,” Taehyun snickers, passing over his phone to Minho.
They’re all gathered around an enormous pot of instant noodles (they don’t have any public schedules for the next day; bloated faces can be forgiven). Seungyoon rolls his eyes and snaps his chopsticks in warning at the youngest.
“Put your phone away, maknae,” he says imperiously, “we’re having a meal together.”
Taehyun ignores him, eyes focused on Minho. The latter clicks open the attachment on Taehyun’s screen and nearly drops the phone into his little bowl of noodles in shock.
“Oi, watch it,” Taehyun snaps, retrieving his phone quickly. “Just because you’re embarrassed-”
“What is it?” Jinwoo asks, interested, leaning over the maknae to sneak a glance at his phone. “I can’t see anything; give this to me.” He plucks the phone out of Taehyun’s hands easily and moves to share the screen with Seunghoon, who’d also looked up at the commotion.
When the two start snickering, Seungyoon starts whining. “Tell me what’s so funny,” he demands, already peeved about the disrespect of his maknae. “Hyung-”
“Hugeboy Minho over here,” Jinwoo snickers, prodding the boy with a socked foot, “apparently fucking hates ants.”
Seungyoon blinks. “So do I?” he says, confused. “I don’t get what’s so funny.”
“He wrote a whole rap over it,” Taehyun elaborates, not bothering to hide his smirk. Minho frowns and points his spoon at Taehyun in warning. “Fuck da ants, motherfuckers,” he finishes, sounding remarkably similar to the rapper’s deep voiced rasp.
“Maknae, you are a shit stirrer,” Minho says slowly, eyes narrowing as Taehyun just flashes him a benign smile. “Ungrateful little shit. Not everyone was lucky enough to start out in a dorm like this,” he says, gesturing the swanky apartment YG houses them in.
“Don’t be bitter, hyung. You’ve got experience. Which means we can put you in charge of pest control now,” Seungyoon crows, obnoxious laugh echoing in the small room as Jinwoo chuckles and Taehyun suppresses a grin.
“Attacked by my own members!” Minho scowls, mock disgust on his face. “I hope you all wake up one day with ants crawling through your underwear drawers.”
Seunghoon nudges him. “Hey, I didn’t do anything,” he protests. “I mean, I may have laughed a little but it was mostly out of sympathy!”
“Yeah, right,” Minho huffs, still annoyed. He’d tried to leave the past decidedly behind him and hated having his lowlier beginnings brought up around his new group. Call it pride, whatever, but he preferred to have his sights set solely on WINNER and the future.
“You’re not the only one who started at the bottom,” Seunghoon says lowly. The others have moved on already, back to slurping loudly on their noodles and watching a viral video on Taehyun’s phone. “And it’s kind of cute, to be honest.”
“Cute,” Minho repeats, nose wrinkling. “Exactly what I love to be called.”
“Take the compliment, brat,” Seunghoon laughs, swatting at Minho’s head. “Besides, I shudder to imagine what you write about us, considering your feelings towards ants.”
“I don’t release it for that reason,” Minho snips back, sticking his tongue out. Seunghoon rolls his eyes and plops more noodles into his bowl.
“Just eat, kid,” he says, “you’re not the only one who unsavoury thoughts. Towards ants.”
Seunghoon looks away with a smile, asking for the soda bottle from Jinwoo. Minho doesn’t answer but stares at him for long afterwards.
Schedules pick up soon afterwards, and even though they’re not promoting there’s always something to do. Seungyoon, the eternally lazy one of the group, hasn’t properly unpacked his carrier in months, and it’s evident in the smell.
It’s one of those mornings where they’re shaken out of bed at three in the morning to get dressed. The airports are always less crowded earlier in the morning and there’s no need to media play for this particular schedule, so by four they’re shuffled out of the dorm and into the van.
A quick game of rock, paper, scissors decides the seating arrangements, save for Jinwoo who’d claimed shotgun under eldest hyung status. Somehow, Minho finds himself shoved into the backseat where there’s less leg room. It’s not too bad, though, because Seunghoon’s just as unlucky. Seunghoon’s taste in music is less offensive than the other ballad types, and seeing as he forgot to charge his phone he’ll have to beg for an earbud to share.
“Hyung, let me listen with you,” he demands the second Seunghoon gets his seat belt buckled, hand out expectantly.
Seunghoon freezes for a moment and then smirks. “I don’t know if you want to listen to what I’m listening to, Minho-yah,” he teases.
“Anything’s better than that,” Minho replies, wrinkling his nose as Taehyun settles into the seat in front of him, doing vocal runs to warm up. It’s not that it sounds bad, but he hears it often enough that four in the morning should be off-limits for this kind of thing.
Seunghoon hums but hands over one of the earbuds, eyes keen on the reaction.
Minho doesn’t get it immediately, but then his own voice starts up and his reaction is probably more violent than what the cramped space really should allow for.
“What the fuck,” he splutters, yanking so that the earphone falls out onto the seat between them. “Why are you listening to this?”
Seunghoon snickers, reclaiming his earphone. “I actually like it,” he answers honestly. “You sound good; I don’t get why you’re so embarrassed about it.”
It’s still dark out thankfully, so Minho’s flush is masked. “I’m not,” he says through gritted teeth. “And it’s not - it’s not because I don’t sound good, or whatever.” He can’t quite meet Seunghoon’s eyes.
“Then what is it? You know BIGBANG sunbaenims used to live with rats, right? And look where they are now. They don’t have a problem admitting it. It builds character.”
“But that’s exactly it,” Minho stresses. “Look at where they are now. Top of the game. And I’m, I’m just. Not.”
“We’re not exactly struggling to get by either,” Seunghoon points out, eyes narrowing.
“I know. I know we’re not. It’s just.” He bites his lip, fidgeting with the hems of his shirt. He doesn’t like to bring this stuff up. “Who knows. Maybe I’m not cut out for this, maybe I’m not good enough, maybe this was all just a fluke and I belong there-”
“Hey, stop that,” Seunghoon says sharply, frowning. “You’re not going to disrespect the rest of us just because you’re too insecure to realize you’re talented as fuck and deserve to be here like the rest of us.”
“I didn’t mean it like that,” Minho says, voice tiny and every inch scolded.
Seunghoon relaxes. “I know you didn’t. Really, dude, I get that you might get these doubts now and then, we all do. But you gotta remember where we are now, and how we got here. In your case, rapping about ants is part of it. You can’t let that get you down.”
Minho feels his anxiety settling at Seunghoon’s words, replaced with a strange feeling of comfort. It’s not often that they’re serious like this, the two moodmakers of the group, but somehow it still feels right.
“You’re right,” he allows. “But maybe I should just keep looking to the future. Go up,” he mumbles, tacking on the words at the end in a half-hearted attempt to lighten the mood.
“Maybe you should write something new then,” Seunghoon suggests, smile playing on his lips. “Something a little more glamorous.”
Minho grins. “Maybe I will.”
They’re assigned hotel rooms, as always. Sometimes Minho misses the fun they used to be allowed during WINNERTV filming, but he also does appreciate having the cameras off during his downtime. This time, he’s paired up with Seunghoon, which only serves to bring back the nostalgia even more. It’s better than being paired up with Jinwoo, at any rate; the baby-faced hyung snores and he’s a light sleeper.
It’s after his shower, towel wrapped loose around his lips, that he walks out to Seunghoon bent over the desk in the room, scribbling something onto the stationary that’s always left out in hotels.
“What are you doing, hyung?” he asks, walking over so that he can peer down, uncaring of the water he’s dripping onto Seunghoon’s shoulder.
Seunghoon leans back to admire his handiwork, moving so that Mino could see as well. From what is still legible against the many crossed out lines, it looks like lyrics.
“You’re writing?” Minho asks, eyebrows lifting in surprise. “I thought you weren’t really into all of this.” He picks up the paper, holding it close in order to make out the messy characters; Seunghoon didn’t necessarily have the greatest handwriting either.
Seunghoon shrugs, rubbing a hand on the back of his neck. “I’m not as good as you, obviously,” he explains. “I was just messing around. I don’t know.” He trails off, and Minho can sense his rising self-consciousness the longer he takes reading the paper.
“It’s good,” he assures. “Ants, though?”
“From earlier,” Seunghoon clarifies. “On the car. I just thought maybe we could do it together. So that if it fails miserably you wouldn’t be the only one to take the fall. It’s dumb, I know-”
“It’s not,” Minho interrupts, eyes snapping up to catch Seunghoon’s. “It’s - Hyung, you didn’t have to.”
A group put together the way they had been, moments of intense appreciation for one another are far from rare. It’s in the way that Seungyoon doesn’t sleep for days at a time because he’s trying to perfect their music one note at a time. In the way that Taehyun spends countless hours coaching Jinwoo, always with unending patience. But this, this feels different.
“I know I didn’t.” Seunghoon holds his stare and there’s something. They’re bandmates, yes, and friends. But there’s something and it makes Minho’s breath catch minutely in his throat. “I wanted to.”
The words are simple but Minho feels like he’s missing half the sentence, half the meaning. The heaviness of them settles somewhere deep in his stomach and for now he’ll let them linger there.
“Thanks,” is all he says, and it feels inadequate somehow. “It means a lot.”
Seunghoon smiles in response. “Hey, it’s not a big deal,” he says, laughing. He lets the tension he hadn’t even noticed break. “Just for fun. But I think I’ll take a little break, since the shower’s finally cleared up.”
Minho grimaces; “I didn’t take that long,” he protests.
“Long enough for me to fill that whole paper,” Seunghoon points out, shaking his head and clapping Minho on the back as he grabs a towel he’d laid out on his bed. “I hope you at least left me some shampoo.”
“Some,” Minho allows and he grins at the pointed look Seunghoon sends him before he shuts the door the bathroom. The paper is still in his hand, a little smudged from the dampness of his hand. He tucks it away carefully in his wallet and doesn’t quite realize that he’s already thinking up the next couple of lines in his head.
It becomes a bit of a habit, afterwards. Enough that Minho always has a pen on hand with him wherever he goes. In the moments when they’re not busy memorizing a script their manager had handed them half an hour before they appear, his mind will drift towards whatever they’d come up with last. Sometimes he can think of something clever to come next, sometimes he’s improving on something they’ve already penned.
They, because true to his word Seunghoon spends just as much time on their impromptu project as Minho does. They keep it to themselves, and the meaningful looks Minho shares with Seunghoon make everything feel more intimate, more personal.
“Maknae, give that to me,” Seunghoon demands, reaching out a hand expectantly at the gum wrapper Taehyun is about to throw out.
“Okay?” Taehyun obeys without objection but lets his judgment show plainly on his face. “You’re weird,” he says afterwards, watching with narrowed eyes as Seunghoon pulls a pen out of nowhere to make scribble minutely on the non-wax side. “Can I see?”
“No,” Seunghoon says, smirking when Minho says the same thing simultaneously. Taehyun’s eyes dart back and forth between the two older boys, disgruntled at being ganged up on. “No, you can’t, beloved maknae.”
Taehyun’s eyebrows furrow in disapproval as Seunghoon passes the little slip of paper to Minho indiscreetly. “Passing notes is for third graders,” he says snidely.
“Stop being so jealous, Taehyunnie, it doesn’t suit you,” Minho advises. “Just let hyung-deul plan your surprise birthday party in peace.”
“Quick question before you leave, though; what kind of loot bags do you like?” Seunghoon quips.
Taehyun stalks away then, off to find a hyung who won’t make fun of him. Minho’s lips twitch up into a grin as Seunghoon bursts into laughter at the sight, and the elbow that he gets nudged into his arm feels more than just friendly because of the wrapper he’s got clutched in his hand.
His wallet soon becomes littered with the scraps of paper and it’s starting to make him worry about losing anything. He doesn’t empty it out, though, just tucks them more securely into the leather folds. It makes him feel better to have their little project, his baby, on him beside the pen in his pocket.
And even when there isn’t paper, there’s always skin.
“Minho-yah, come here,” Seunghoon whispers so as not to wake up Seungyoon sleeping on their left. Minho scoots closer and offers his arm in recognition when he sees Seunghoon pull out a ballpoint.
“Tickles?” he asks as his makes more careful strokes along Minho’s arms.
“No, it feels kind of nice.” Minho leaves out the part about how it isn’t really the pen dragging along his skin that feels good, but more the proximity, Seunghoon bent closer and his breath lightly fanning over his arm. It’s the firm but gentle grip Seunghoon’s has on his wrist to steady the arm, the way Seunghoon’s eyebrows are furrowed in concentration. “What are you writing this time?”
“Patience is a virtue,” Seunghoon replies, corner of his lip raised. He’s gotten much better at this lyric thing, Minho’s noticed, and he can’t help but think that maybe it’s because he’s mulling them over in his mind for longer.
(There’s a small, small part of him that realizes how often he must be on Seunghoon’s mind, if that’s the case. There’s an even smaller part that doesn’t know why that makes him feel so good.)
“Don’t smudge them,” Seunghoon cautions when he finishes, Minho craning his head to get a good look at the script running the length of his arms.
“Hyung, this doesn’t even make sense,” Minho complains, reading the sentence over. “I thought we were writing about ants?”
“Hush,” Seunghoon says, eyes trained on Seungyoon’s stirring form. “Pull your sleeve down, Minho.”
He does, but the words are still fresh in his mind. Seunghoon isn’t one to quote sappy love lines from the ballads that play during their favourite dramas, so he doesn’t know where the one written on his arm came from. Something about unrequited love and invisible boundaries and the way that Seunghoon doesn’t look at him afterwards makes it suddenly a little hard to breathe.
Things all go to shit on the same day and honestly, it fucking sucks.
The day begins with the realization that he can’t find his wallet.
He’s got a Post-It with the latest addition to their almost completed song, the adhesive beginning to wear off from where it’s stuck to his thumb. He can hear the rest of the members start their morning routines from outside, can hear Jinwoo singing in the shower for everyone to hear. They’re due to leave in half an hour, and every minute he spends tearing his room apart looking for his wallet lessens the time he’ll have either in the shower or eating.
It’s a knock on his door that distracts him, and when he opens it he finds Taehyun there, holding a laundry basket full of unfolded clothes.
“Manager-hyung told me to give these to you,” Taehyun informs him drily, all but shoving the basket into Minho’s arms. “You should fold them before they got all wrinkly; you know you won’t have time to iron them later.”
Taehyun leaves after that, responsibility fulfilled, and doesn’t even notice the way Minho’s face had frozen midsentence.
His suspicions are confirmed when he finds his wallet at the bottom of the basket, freshly laundered and utterly devoid of any of the scraps of paper he’s been collecting for weeks.
He doesn’t even have the time to mourn his loss because he’s being rushed into the company van. Seunghoon smiles at him as he gets in but Minho’s still reeling, still stunned, and can’t meet his eyes.
He hadn’t realized just how fragile everything had been, and now it was all lost. His job as an idol requires him to put on a mask and pretend like everything is fine, but everyone notices something is off with his interview answers that day. No one asks, because they know not to pry.
The hurt in Seunghoon’s eyes when Minho flinches away from his worried touch probably feels the worst.
Except it isn’t. Isn’t the worst.
No, the worst comes a couple of hours, on the car ride home, and the migraine in his head that’s been raging all day has got him even more on edge than before.
Seungyoon and Seunghoon are talking in the seats in front of him, loud enough that it’s hard to ignore, no matter how much he wants to.
“Stop texting your girlfriend and pay attention to me,” Seungyoon snaps at one point, irritated by Seunghoon’s busy fingers over his phone. “You didn’t even laugh at my joke.”
“That’s because it wasn’t funny, Seungyoonie,” Seunghoon replies absentmindedly, looking up briefly to flash him a smile.
Seungyoon huffs, offended, but Minho hasn’t caught up yet. He’s still on that first line. Your girlfriend, he hears, echoing.
“You have a girlfriend?” he blurts out before he can help it, and fuck, he doesn’t mean the accusation in his voice, the hurt.
Taehyun, sitting beside him, looks at him. There’s something in his eyes that Minho doesn’t like, but he can’t focus on that because Seunghoon is finally putting his phone down and the look in his eyes is easily recognizable.
Apologies.
Yes, this hurts, and he’s beginning to get why. He won’t admit it, though, of course he won’t, because that would make it real, and that would make the pain that’s piercing through his insides something intimate, something personal.
The dynamic of the group changes after that day, albeit by a small amount. But it’s enough to be noticeable, enough to attract the attention of the members.
Minho becomes more withdrawn and Seunghoon more loud, more boisterous, and so much more attached to the other three.
Luckily, there’s too much to be done in preparation for their upcoming comeback to wallow in depressing thoughts and feelings. It’s easy to bury the pain when Minho’s barely getting any sleep because of the dance rehearsals, the recordings, the concept planning, and endless, endless practice. It’s easy to ignore the gnawing in the pit of his stomach when he’s too busy thinking about when they’re going to be allowed to eat and forcing his eyes open so that their dance trainer doesn’t think he’s slacking.
It’s not easy at all, though, to hold back all of these feelings when he’s hunched over his desk late at night, when he should be catching up on precious sleep. He’s got sheaves of papers messily spread all over, angry black and blue ink scrawled across full pages. It’s different when he’s writing songs by himself. He doesn’t have to wait for anyone else, doesn’t have to get anyone’s approval.
But everything he’s writing is terrible. It’s emotional and messy and irrational and half the time the rhythm is off because he’s too busy trying to put thought to paper to care. It doesn’t make him feel happy and there’s nothing special about it. They’re nothing he wants to keep, nothing he wants to keep tucked away in his wallet in his back pocket.
He hears about Seunghoon’s breakup one day and it doesn’t do anything for him. Doesn’t change the feeling of betrayal, the feeling of not being good enough.
The pen has long since been sloughed off in the shower but the words Seunghoon had inked onto his arm from all those weeks ago are still branded into his mind.
“Minho-yah,” Seunghoon says one day, later, when they’re on a short break right before the comeback to regain strength. “Minho, I want to show you something.”
The endearment sounds foreign in Minho’s ears since it’s been so long since he’s last heard it. It’s been a long time since Seunghoon’s actually tried to make conversation, for that matter, and the thought doesn’t sit well with him.
“What is it, hyung?” he asks, following Seunghoon into the recording studio. “Did you finally figure out what’s wrong with the second verse of the song?”
Seunghoon looks nervous, eyes shifting and hands twisting at his sides. “No, it isn’t that. It’s, um, something else.” He gestures for Minho to take a seat and takes one as well, opposite. “I’ve been meaning to show you for a while, but. And I wanted to make it a surprise. It’s probably not.” The words tumble awkwardly out of his mouth and it makes Minho want to smile. A flustered Seunghoon is a cute Seunghoon, even if he hasn’t been very himself lately at all. “I’ll just show you.”
Minho’s curiosity is piqued when Seunghoon pushes the play button and an unfamiliar beat starts playing in the little studio. It’s not one from any of their solo projects, or one off their album. The instrumental in the background is foreign as well.
But the moment he hears Seunghoon’s voice start playing over the speakers he recognizes what this is. How could he not, when the words that are hitting the beats at the perfect times are the same ones he’d tried to make out on that first night in the hotel, written on a piece of hotel stationary. And the ones that follow, ones that he’d come up with himself in the middle of lunch the next day.
On and on the song goes and Minho is speechless. Completely and utterly.
“How?” he asks the second it’s over, closing on unfamiliar lyrics, ones that he hadn’t written nor had he ever seen Seunghoon write. “I thought - I lost them. In the laundry. I lost them and-”
“You really thought I’d be that careless?” Seunghoon answers. “Especially after that time we ruined Jinwoo-hyung’s passport? I found your wallet, Minho, and had to save a couple of these little scraps from falling out. It was really too full, you know.” He pushes a small box towards him, and upon opening it Minho finds all of the papers he’d collected, all of their lyrics that he’d saved so preciously.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” Minho demands, his relief manifesting as anger. “I thought they were all gone, that I’d ruined everything, and all along you had them. I thought you’d hate me, hyung.”
“You really think I could hate you, Minho?” Seunghoon snaps. “After all I’ve done for you, and you never clued in? I could never hate you. Especially not now, not when I’m finally coming to terms with the fact that I like you more than I should.”
“You what?”
Minho’s eyes widen, mouth dropping open in shock. He didn’t hear right, he can’t have heard right because -
Seunghoon’s jaw shuts abruptly, the irritation in his face disappearing, to be replaced with trepidation. “I-You heard me,” he says, nervous all over again. “I like you. In a non-platonic way. And I’m kind of desperately hoping the last couple of weeks I spent working on this song makes you even the littlest bit open to maybe giving me a chance.”
“Hyung,” Minho says, and the words are a little bit echoey to him. Mostly because he’s too busy being overwhelmed to pay proper attention. “Hyung, you’re an idiot. You’re the one who went ahead and got a girlfriend on me and tore my heart to shreds.”
“I did not,” Seunghoon protests. “I only agreed so that Seungyoon would get off my back. I was actually just talking with an out-of-house producer about helping me with this track, since, you know, it was supposed to be a secret.”
“God, hyung, I can’t believe…” he trails off, at a loss for words. “I can’t believe you’d do all of this. For me. You didn’t have to.”
The smile on Seunghoon’s face is so gentle, and so, so familiar. As are his next words.
“I know I didn’t,” he says. “I wanted to.”
And now Minho understands why the words felt so much heavier than he’d initially thought, why he felt like he’d been missing half the meaning.
“Seunghoon-hyung, I love you, too,” Minho says, finally realizing, and the way Seunghoon’s face lights up is worth everything.