f.t island; red string of destiny {jonghun/hongki}
red string of destiny.
jonghun’s always known that he was meant for something special, he just didn’t know what.
pg; jonghun/hongki; 10,379 words.
note: not all the facts in this are accurate. i pulled most of them off of wiki and fan sites but there were some things i couldn't find, so i just kind of, made it up. i hope you don't mind!
The first time Jonghun handled an instrument, it was an unremarkable tiny keyboard piano that made off-pitch bleeps when he held down a note for longer than three seconds. He slammed his chubby little fingers down on it over and over again for hours at a time, until he found some notes that sounded better than other ones. His mother watched, amazed, as he hit a flat note and immediately hit a regular note, as though he were trying to figure them out by sound alone.
When she tried to take the toy away at night, she told him once, many years later, he would cry and cry until she put the piano inside the crib with him, and he curled his fists around it hugged it in his sleep.
He would wake up in the middle of the night, and she’d hear him pressing keys with his chubby fingers through the baby monitor. She held her husband’s hand and couldn’t help herself for thinking, ‘My baby is special.’ Jonghun didn’t really think anything of it in middle school because every mother he’d ever met would say exactly the same thing as his. It wasn’t until later, when he was standing on stage before the roar of the full Tokyo dome showering over him, that he felt that perhaps his mother was right in saying that he was special.
-
Jonghun learned how to play the piano first. He liked the sounds it admitted, and he liked the feeling of cool keys under his fingers. He even enjoyed tuning it and could do it by ear. He learned all of the classics, and when he was tired of those and just wanted to mess around, he’d create some of his own. It was as satisfying and familiar to him as his own voice and it worked well to satisfy his cravings for more, until he found a beat up old guitar in an alleyway behind his house. He found a friend to tune it for him and bought some books on how to play guitar at a store down the street and for a whole week, all he could do was eat and breathe it until he had every chord down and could tune it by ear himself like he could the piano.
His mother always called him a little prodigy, but he’s always thought she was just being overly proud, until he picked up the guitar and played and played and played. He started to think that maybe she was right after all. It made his heart swell in the way he was sure a kiss would never, and it made his chest go tight when he played something without mistakes. But soon enough he’d make one, and then he’d think it was probably just because he would practice so often.
It wasn’t as though it was all of his life, although he felt like it sometimes. But it was so much easier to focus on music. His friends told him to go get a girlfriend, because guys who could play music had extra points in the books of everyone of the female gender. But dates were awkward, and his hand always felt strange in the hands of every girl, even though they were always pretty and always kind and really, his friends thought he was insane for never staying with the perfect girls.
They just couldn’t understand that no girl could compare to music, and his love for it. There was no contest, and even though he wanted to be in love, really wanted to, he couldn’t. He thought it was because of music until one day, when the class was changing in the gym lockers and his friends came out of the showers with nothing on but the towels around their waists.
Jonghun stared for who knows how long, until he realized it and turned back to his locker with color rising to his cheeks. Something inside of him, something he didn’t want to admit rose to the first time in his young lifetime, and he shut it down. He dressed quickly and left, claiming that he forgot something, and all but sprinted out of the room and through the hallways to the farthest bathroom. He hid in it for half of class and had to get a pass for his tardiness, but there was something there, when he looked at his friends, that he’d never really paid attention to before. Something that made him feel the same way music did, but with the potential to be even more potent.
When his friends found out about a company holding auditions for people who play musical instruments, they signed him up without letting him know. He walked into the audition room and froze, knowing full well that he wasn’t good enough for an audition like this. Unsure of what he was doing there, he almost walked right back out. What was he going to do with his life, if not music? That’s the question that made him tighten his grip on his guitar and swing it into playing position. The strings were cool and pliable under his fingers, well worn, well tuned, and he played better than he could ever remember playing in his entire life.
There was a sheen of sweat collecting on the back of his neck by the time he finished, and it slid below the strap of his guitar and under his dark hair, prickling at the back of his neck. He gave the judges a deep bow before he left, but they stopped him before he got to the door, accepting him. Shocked, amazed, a little stunned, he took the applications home to his parents and from that moment on, he was a trainee.
He should have been amazed when he was admitted to the company. He should have, he really should have, but he wasn’t. It was the moment of his dreams, just one step closer to fame and fortune and a lifetime of making music. It was just one step of many, but it brought tears to his eyes nevertheless.
His pre-debut days passed by in a blur. He continued to get better and better. His life felt like a waltz with music, some perfect version of life where music was all he could hear. People whispered about him in the hallways, saying ‘there he is, the music man’ as he passed them by. He wouldn’t let it bother him, because it was some kind of a compliment, if an obsession can be something to be complimented for.
But if he thought that playing alone was a great experience, the first time he played with Jaejin and Minhwan, both of them two other skilled (and young) trainee’s, it was as though he’d transcended into a whole new level of existence. Something was missing, a voice, but it was fine with him , because Minhwan was as steady with the drums as he seems with everything else in his life, and Jaejin accompanied him with the lower base line, weaving in and out of his guitar, and there was definitely something special about being lead by the beat of the drum that he’d never felt before, some sort of a lifeline that he sticks to, even moves to, and when the song ended he just wanted to keep on playing. Stopping now and he’d feel as though he were cheated.
He turned to Jaejin and Minhwan and he wasn’t positive if there were in his eyes or not like there were in theirs, but the only thing he can think of is, “wow, we were great.” His cheeks were flushed red and he couldn’t stop smiling.
They all laughed and hugged, and all Jonghun wanted to do was keep on playing without stopping.
-
Hongki appeared into their lives not long after that, and he was loud and obnoxious but the first time Jonghun heard his voice, he started to believe in true love. He was playing his acoustic when Hongki came over to him, weaving his hips to the gentle music over and put his hands on his shoulders and rocked back and forth to the beat while he sang with all he could possibly give. Jonghun bit his lip and resisted the urge to kiss him, because that was something that seemed far too bold, something completely new, an insecurity he wasn’t sure he could get into, not in the middle of a song. Nevertheless his fingers faltered and skipped an entire three measures before he could get them working again.
Meeting Wonbin was awkward, because they’re both very quiet. Unlike Hongki, who was loud and obnoxious, at first the only thing Jonghun knew about Wonbin was that he wanted to be a singer but the company urged him to continue guitar so he could debut. Awkwardly, he told Wonbin about the time he proposed to his girlfriend by writing music for her and how she ignored it. It was a sad story in his opinion, but it made Wonbin laugh and Jonghun figured it would be okay, so long as it broke the ice between them. Wonbin liked to play soccer, and Jonghun had two left feet, so when they went out to the field to play, it was mostly an embarrassment for him but it made the other boy happy, which was enough to make them fast friends too, even if it was a bit unconventional and ended in a bloody nose for him.
There was something about Wonbin that told him he didn’t really want to make music. Either it was the coldness in the way he played his instrument, or the envious looks he’d give Hongki when he was called for singing practice when Wonbin would be shafted into rap. The five of them were starting to think something was up, when the management declared them ready to debut into a band called five treasure island. He could barely pronounce the name, but he tried them out in his mouth anyway, slowly sounding them out with so much concentration (English wasn’t his strong point) that he completely missed that he was named leader.
It wasn’t until Hongki slapped him on the back roughly that his snaps up.
“Wha-?” He blinked at him, swivelling around in his chair to elbow him in the ribs. “What are you doing?”
“Congratulations, leader,” Hongki grinned as bright as can be and Jonghun gaped at him. At the hard edge to his smile, and the jealousy that he was hiding in his eyes.
Him? A leader? A leader of four boys? “No, no way.” He turned his attention to the manager who just nodded at him with a serious expression. He knew he wasn’t suited for it, everyone knew it. He was just doing this for the music, he thought they all knew that. The music and nothing else - that was his oath.
But at the same time he was reasserting his place in the world to himself, Jaejin and Minhwan floped on him from behind, knocking him off his chair with a shriek. They all laughed as Hongki and Wonbin both join them in the dog pile and Jaejin whispers in his ear, something he could never forget. “Hyung, we did it, we’re going to be idols.”
And for the first time, squished under the weight of four other (heavy) boys who crushed his lungs and ribs and everything else, his heart felt weightless, as though it could float right out of his chest and fly away, leaving him here. There was something about it, the way Jaejin was complaining in his ear about Wonbin’s foot in his face, and the way he can barely breathe, and Hongki’s loud laughter, and Minhwan’s quiet complaints, and Wonbin’s victorious hooting.
-
The next months leading up to May were some of the most difficult he’d ever been through, and they’d been in the recording studio so often that he was pretty sure they could just live in it instead of the dorm. He was so busy that he didn’t realize that they hadn’t been taking care of their bodies until he was playing the guitar while recording and his pick began to slip and slide in his fingers and they hurt so much that he was pretty sure they just fell off. He glanced down, only to see that they were bleeding, a lot. Enough for red to stain his guitar with the dark color.
He hit a sharp and let his fingers fall away from the strings and hang at his sides. He stepped back from the recording equipment, the haze of constant music and melodies and never ending re-do’s blurring together in his mind that he began to realize he’d started to lose sight of what he loved, music. Something was wrong, and it was on the tip of his tongue when he looked at the others. He’d been spending most of his time believing that they didn’t really need a leader, that they could lead themselves.
“I think we should stop,” he breathes into the mic, his eyes on the members instead of the producers. They were huddled in the chairs in the back of the room, either sleeping or reading sheet music. Hongki was the only one that was watching him, surprisingly, because he was usually on the phone with someone else or texting or playing a game. He tried to pretend that didn’t bother him, because he’s not Hongki’s parent, he’s his friend, and he could do whatever he wanted. But Minhwan was curled up in the chair beside him, wrapped up in a little blanket and he looked so young, so very young, that Jonghun’s heart hurt a little that he hadn’t noticed it before. He was more than just their friends, he was their leader.
His gaze lingered on Hongki’s, and he noticed the beginning of something he couldn’t really put his finger on. Or perhaps it had started from the beginning, but Jonghun has always only known music, and he just guessed at everything else. He didn’t want to deal with anything else. He stepped away from the recording equipment and tried in vain to open the door but couldn’t as his fingers were too slick twist the brass handle on the door. He should have felt a lot more pathetic than he did when Hongki twisted the handle for him to let him out.
There was a second, where Jonghun thought he might have imagined it, where they both just stopped and stared at one another. Hongki was wearing a beanie and his fingers were painted black - Jonghun’s realized a few weeks after their first meeting that he has a strange affinity with painting his nails with loud and outrageous things. It made his long fingers stand out, but more than that, the dark sweater he was wearing brought out how pale he was and the bags under his eyes. It filled him with a sudden anger that was suddenly so hard to control that he shook as he fought it back into nonexistence.
“What, you can’t even open a door?” Hongki asked, and his lips were dry enough to be in a desert. Hongki glanced down at his hands, and he remembered that they were bleeding just slowly enough for him to pull them out of reach before they were grabbed.
Jonghun brushed past him and curled his hands into fists so that the producers and managers wouldn’t see his fingers.
“Jonghun,” Hongki frowned, leaning against the back of the door as he shuts it behind him. Jonghun can hear the concern flooding his voice.
Jonghun just smiled to himself and pulled a tissue out of the box on the table. He felt like a real artist, for some reason, although his fingers stung horribly. He played too much. That was it. Instead of taking it easy like Jaejin, whose fingers had built up a steady resistance, Jonghun played constantly, every day, from morning to night, even when he had no need to. Even when he was supposed to be resting. He couldn’t stop. It made him calm. It kept his thoughts from other things he rather didn’t think about.
Their manager was watching him with an unreadable expression as he tossed the kleenex in the trash.
“Alright, get the kids,” is all he says, and turned to have a word with the producers who looked just as exhausted as they were. It was the first time Jonghun had spoken up on behalf of the others, and it could have easily been ignored if everyone weren’t in agreement. Perhaps the others had seen the way Minhwan looked like he was going to fall apart, or perhaps they saw the way Jaejin had a growing bruise on his shoulder, or the way Wonbin had been practicing his raps so much that his voice had gone hoarse? But if they’d seen it, they would have stopped. They would have given them a break.
That night, in the dorm while, waiting to use the bathroom, he came up from a crouch with his pyjama’s in hand to find Hongki standing behind him. His face was partially hidden from his hair until he flipped his bangs out of his eyes back and gave him a smile that flashed his sharp canines. His hands brushed Jonghun’s and lifted them up. Jonghun supressed the strange fluttering somewhere under his ribcage that he refuses to think about.
“Thanks,” he grinned, jerking a thumb behind him at the passed out Jaejin. “They were really tired.”
Jonghun laughed, “like you’re not.”
He breaks contact to pull his shirt over his head and drop it in the hamper. Cold air brushed against his bare chest. He resisted the urge to shiver. Then Hongki put his hand on his chest and suddenly, all of the chilliness disappeared with a rush of warmth at the contact. Hongki felt his abdomen.
“What do you do?” He asked, ogling at the muscles.
“Be awesome?” Jonghun attempted to joke, flinching away from Hongki’s fist. Hongki caught his bandaged fingers as he tried to escape.
“Hello Kitty?” He quirked an eyebrow and shot him an amused grin. “Are you a girl, or something?”
“I needed to match your fingernails for gaudiness,” he ventured, deflecting another punch.
“My nails are awesome,” Hongki exclaimed with a slap, and Jonghun just laughed at him and turned away to pull a nightshirt over his head. “But really,” Hongki’s voice went soft. “Thanks for today. I was starting to think I should have been leader after all, but you’re a man after all, aren’t you?”
Jonghun turned to him, surprised. “You didn’t think I could be?”
Hongki placed one hand on his hip and the other ran through his hair. “I didn’t think you thought you could be.”
Jonghun stared at the slightly embarrassed expression on Hongki’s face. “Well, I didn’t think you thought I thought I couldn’t be.”
Jonghun escaped as Hongki fumbled to figure out what he said. His heart was beating as though it were going to beat right out of his chest, and his blood was rushing in his ears. He leaned against the wall and tried his hardest not to think of it, but Hongki’s hand on his chest made songs come out of his soul, or something cheesy like that.
It wouldn’t work.
He was sure about it. He liked girls, he really did. He liked to look at girly magazines and he liked porn on occasion, it was just that he didn’t have the time to be around them anymore. There were girl trainees but they were all younger than him, and he was preparing for debut. He was going to be a star. He had to focus on music, and that was it.
He suppressed the feelings, the bad, bad feelings, and listened to muse until he fell asleep with the music still blaring from his earbuds.
-
On May 27, 2007 they had their first live showcase, and following that, their album was released along with their first stage on a broadcasting network. It was odd, playing without being plugged in. No one would hear it, no one but they would ever be able to hear what they sounded like that day. It was almost disheartening, except he knew that with these would come live concerts, and that was enough. They were still their songs, no matter if they couldn’t hear them. Girls were still screaming their names, the cameras were still pointed at them. And they had concerts at livehouses, and those were some of the best places. The stages were small, the speakers were loud and vibrated music right through him as though he didn’t exist, and the crowds screamed and ate it all up. The feeling of playing in front of a crowd of people, even if there were only ten people in the crowd, was one of the most amazing feelings he’d ever had.
But that wasn’t enough for some of them.
Wonbin’d had trouble from day one - and Jonghun knew it, somehow. But sometime after their first debut in Japan, even though they’d had great success. Although their album had done well in sales, Wonbin was growing more and more unhappy. Jonghun was okay with being the member that wouldn’t always be in the spotlight. Hongki was personable, he was strange, he was a head-turner. He was their vocal and their head and it was the job of the vocalist - as far as Jonghun knew, Hongki didn’t mind it, either. But Wonbin didn’t want to be a background member. They all knew it.
One night, Jonghun was curled up outside on the porch, watching the city lights, when Wonbin joined him. It had been another day of Japanese practice and music recording, and Jonghun could see the strain before he’d said anything. Wonbin sat next to him, throwing his legs through the bars in the fencing and sitting back on his elbows, looking up towards the tips of the skyscrapers and the night sky.
“I don’t want to do this anymore,” was all he said. There was a defeatist tone to his words that Jonghun had never heard before. Fighter Wonbin, strong man, the manly member in the group - wanting to quit. Jonghun had ignored all the previous signs, but here he was, telling him, the unrightful leader of their merry band of horrors.
Jonghun watched his profile for a long time, but Wonbin didn’t say anymore, they just sat in silence. A thought occurred to Jonghun that he’d been waiting to say that to someone he could trust, someone who he thought could deal with it.
“We need you,” he finally said, sitting up a bit so he could put a hand on his shoulder. It was warm under his palm.
“Yeah right,” Wonbin laughed. “You’ll get on well enough.” He said, a twinkle in his eye. “You guys have Hongki.”
Jonghun detected the slight bitterness in his tone. “You guys are friends,” he frowned.
“We’re co-workers,” Wonbin clarified, and Jonghun sucked in a breathe to know that that was how Wonbin had thought of them all while he was here, living and working with them. A twenty-four hour job, seven days a week, no holidays.
It was no wonder that he didn’t want to do it anymore.
“You have to do what you have to do,” Jonghun said after a long pause while he was mulling everything else. Wonbin was the same age as both Hongki and him, and they were all close friends, or so he thought. “But you have to keep in touch,” he elbowed him in the side.
Wonbin laughed, rubbing at the back of his neck. “Don’t worry, I always will.” He smiled, although it faded soon enough as he stared at the clouds. “Minhwan is going to hate me.”
Jonghun shrugged. “He’ll get over it. So will we.”
Wonbin laughed and slung an arm around Jonghun’s shoulders. He detected the scent of his cologne and fought the blush rising to his cheeks. Wonbin was warm, always warm. Even when he was leaving them, he was so warm that it wasn’t fair. His heart was just that big, was all. It was a condition.
“Maybe you do make a good leader after all,” he said with a grin, fluffling Jonghun’s hair before he left to go to bed.
It took a little while, there were a lot of hoops to jump through and many tears, they were in the middle of promotions for their single and such, but finally the official word went out that Wonbin left for differences in musical taste - but they all knew that he hadn’t signed up for a gig like this. They could all feel it from day one, even though they tried their best to make it better.
Minhwan was particularly hurt. Maybe heartbroken, maybe worse. Jonghun had been playing nonsense on the keyboard when the youngest came in and took a seat in the room.
For a long time, there was no noise, only the light piano playing. Finally, Minhwan scooted next to him on the bench and started to play with him.
“I miss him, hyung,” Minhwan said, and Jonghun, at a loss, pulled him into a crushing hug.
“You can always visit him,” Jonghun said, “or call him. He’ll be there,” Minhwan sniffled against his neck.
“We’re too busy for that,” he whispered, and Jonghun rubbed his back, wondering if he was giving the right advice or not. “It’ll be okay,” he said, even though he didn’t believe it. “It’ll just take time.”
He wasn’t good at giving advice. Instead, he taught Minhwan how to play a song on the piano to pass the time.
-
In the time before Seunghyun came, the group practiced Japanese and had a sort of vacation that they never really had. Jonghun wasn’t certain if he liked going to Japan to promote at first, but it only took a few times to realize how much freedom they had over there. How everything was so different, even if their countries were so close. It was different, in a nicer way. He couldn’t really explain it.
“Maybe it’s because it rains more there,” Jaejin said from the couch, munching on some french fries. “I mean, you’ve always liked the rain.”
Jonghun lifted his head from it’s place on armrest of the other couch. He was sprawled along the soft piece of furnature, his long legs sticking over the other arm. “Does it really rain more there?”
“Whenever we go there, it’s raining,” Jaejin grinned, and flopped his legs out. “What did you say? Rain makes you manly?”
Hongki snorted from the kitchen, inhaling milk. Minhwan saved him from an untimely death with a few well placed slaps on the back. “Be more careful, hyung. I don’t want you to die.” Jonghun felt a little queasy in his stomach, a sharp, sudden pain in his abdomen. He bent his head backwards to look into the kitchen.
“He okay?” He asked, not wanting to get up even though panic had seized his nerves.
Hongki ran over as soon as his throat was clear and sat on his stomach. Jonghun squawked, feeling his cheeks go red and his heart start to beat louder in his chest. He wondered if Hongki could hear it. If he could feel it.
“Get off,” he moaned, trying not to sound too desperate. “You’re butt is crushing me.” In response, Hongki wiggled his butt down into his abdomen a little more.
Jonghun felt dizzy. Whatever was happening to him, all of the repressed emotions flared up in him at once and broke whatever dam he’d constructed to hold them at bay, because it left him breathless. He’d like to think that he’d been in love before. He’d been in relationships with women, and he’d like to think that he’d loved them, although he’d been too young, maybe just a little too naive to think that what he felt then was love, when what he felt now was so much more vibrant that it hurt.
“Hongki,” he said, and something in his voice must have triggered Hongki’s interest enough to get him to stop laughing. Their gazes locked, and Jonghun pushed him off, unable to take it. The singer flopped over onto his legs and shot back with a foot near his face, but his hand was on his thigh, so Jonghun couldn’t even care about the foot when he was going senseless. He pulled himself up, flushed and breathless.
“I have to go to the bathroom,” he bit out, and all but ran to the room, locked the door and leaned his back against it. His heart was still thumping, and his image in the mirror across from him told him everything he already knew but had attempted to suppress since they’d met. He ran a hand across his face, through his hair, and down to rub at the back of his neck.
There was a distinct tingling throbbing through him, different than music, different than any love he’d ever experienced, different, even, than lust. He couldn’t put his finger on it, whatever it was. The feeling that wouldn’t stop making the world rush by his ears as though he’d stepped into a vacuum, or the throbbing of his flesh where Hongki had taken a seat on him. And most certainly, he shouldn’t have felt the way he did, all the way down to his groin. He ran the water on cold and dunked his head into the sink, trying to come to terms with it.
He raised his head, pinched his cheeks, slapped the sides of his head with the sides of his hands. The idea stuck. It sounded right, but he didn’t - couldn’t - admit it. Admitting it would be like admitting that he’d never had sex before. And certainly not the kind of sex his body wanted with a certain person. Hongki.
But Hongki wasn’t like him. Even though Hongki had been raised by a loving family just like him, and even though Hongki had friends and liked music and liked nail polish and styling his hair and going shopping and picking out outfits, even though his hands were always warm and comfortable on his skin and even though Hongki liked to lay all over him, Hongki wasn’t gay.
But Jonghun was.
He squished his cheeks together in the mirror. This kind of thing was why he ought to focus on only music. Only music and girls and how cute they are and being manly for them because that was what guys were supposed to do. Be manly. Unlike he was. The world was too complex, it was better to keep it simple. It was better not to think about certain socially unacceptable facts, not when he was an idol living in a fast paced idol world where the only passion he was going to have time for was for was music. Music, music, only music.
He jumped at a knock on the door, bumping up against the back counter.
“Hyung, are you taking a shower?” Jaejin asked.
“Um, no,” he said, resting his head against the cold glass of the mirror, wishing something would just reach out of it and whisk him off to some other reality.
“Are you...you know.”
“What? No, I’ll be right out,” he said, putting as much optimism as he could into his voice. “I’m fixing my hair.”
“Okay, but just so you know, manager hyung said the new member is going to be in your room.” Jaejin’s footsteps shuffled away from the door, and Jonghun returned to panic mode. Another boy in his room, now, when he was trying to pay attention to his crisis. He was going to go to hell and back again, he just knew it.
He left the bathroom with sullen steps and rejoined the others in the living room. The minute he sat down next to Hongki, he put his head in Jonghun’s lap, flipping idly through a fashion magazine. Jonghun fought sparks, curling his toes against the floor uncomfortably. Hongki’s head was so warm, and so heavy, and his eyelashes were so long and curled ever so slightly. His ugly painted nails flashed as he flipped through the booklet, the skull on the thumb grinning at him almost knowingly. He turned his attention to somewhere else, and the only place his eyes would go was Hongki’s lips. They looked far too soft for lips, and he wondered if they were as soft as they looked, or if it was some cosmetic talking. They were a rosy red, which made them stand out against his skin, and Jonghun couldn’t think of anything but leaning down and covering those lips up with his own in a firm, unwavering kiss. A kiss that would tell him just how he felt so that he wouldn’t have to endure the torture of stupid questions.
He realized that he was staring when their eyes met. A jolt that felt too real to not be an electric shot ran up his spine, and he swallowed, unable to look away. Hongki dropped the magazine onto his stomach (Jonghun wasn’t surprised to see Song Ji Hyo on the cover.
Which sat him right back into reality with a slap, for sure. Her pretty face, framed by long, flowing hair. Hongki’s ideal woman - or one of them, anyway - stared at him and he finally managed to look away from Hongki. Instead, he watched Minhwan in the kitchen, making something or other. It smelled like chicken, whatever it was.
“What are you making?” He called to him, letting his head fall against the back of his couch and ignoring the lump in his throat, as well as Hongki’s burning questioning gaze.
“Chicken stirfry,” Minhwan called, stirring something in the pan.
“Don’t burn yourself,” Jonghun called, and when he looked across to Jaejin, the bassist just quirked an eyebrow at him from over his game.
“I’m bored,” Hongki whined, after a long silence. He sat up and slapped Jonghun in the shoulder before walking off with his cellphone in hand. He was already going through his contacts. Ten minutes later he was out the door and Jaejin was in the kitchen, stealing food from Minhwan.
-
Hongki was still gone when Seunghyun arrived. Jonghun missed him, mostly because Hongki would dispel the awkward silence that followed his meeting. Just from looking at him, Jonghun could tell that he wasn’t exactly the epitome of normalcy. Which was kind of a good thing, because none of them were really normal, not even Minhwan.
“My best features are my eyes and chin,” Seunghyun said by way of introducing himself. Minhwan stared at him from the corner of the couch, and Jonghun was pretty sure that he knew how he felt. But it couldn’t be helped. He put a hand on Seunghyun’s shoulder and led him to his room, which they had moved around to make room for his bed and things. It was small, and cramped, but Seunghyun didn’t have much.
-
That night, Jonghun was laying on his side, fingers hidden under his pillow, when Seunghyun slipped out of bed and poked him in the back. “Hyung, will I do a good job?” Seunghyun asked, and even though the darkness was hiding his face it didn’t take a genius to realize how afraid and nervous he’d been. It struck Jonghun just how young Seunghyun was, too young to face the hate involved with joining an already established group, for sure.
What he really meant to ask was, “Will I be accepted,” but neither of them mentioned it.
Jonghun found his shoulder in the darkness and gave it a squeeze. “Do you like music?”
“Hyung, music is my life.”
Jonghun smiled, wishing he could still say the same. “Then you’ll be great. Trust me.”
Seunghyun touched his hand for a moment, and the warmth that was left there was enough to keep his hands warm for the rest of the night, until he was woken up by his covers being ripped off of him, as usual.
-
Hongki welcomed Seunghyun into the group by slamming the bathroom door in his face, and the newest member joined the rest of them in the kitchen with a sullen look, leaning against the corner and trying in vain to hide his crestfallen look. Jonghun frowned, wondering if, maybe, he could talk to Hongki about it.
“He’s not usually this bad,” he started.
Jaejin interjected, munching on pop tarts. “Yeah he is.”
Jonghun frowned at him. “No, he’s not.”
“It’s morning, he is.” Jaejin’s eyes twinkled with something that Jonghun couldn’t really place. Jonghun laughed, handing Seunghyun the milk.
“You’re right,” he thought of all the times Hongki had abused him in some way before noon. “He is.” Maybe it was the lack of sleep, or the early morning sluggishness, but a soft smile made it’s way to his face without his realizing it. Maybe it was because he was thinking of the time Hongki had thrown a remote at his head, or when he punched him with amazing accuracy in the nose while still asleep, but something made Seunghyun lean in close and whisper to him:
“Hyung, you look lovestruck.”
Jonghun started, straightening up so suddenly that they nearly bumped heads. He stared at Seunghyun, and Seunghyun stared back with a smile that sent a chill up his back.
“I’m sleepy,” he said, suddenly very interested in stirring the cereal in his bowl, and escaped to sit on the other side of Minhwan on the couch to get away from him. His heart was pounding like an unsteady beat, and all he could think was how dead he was going to be when Seunghyun told the others, and he wondered if they’d kick him out of the group and if they’d find someone better to replace him when the company found out, and if that would be the end of all of his dreams, right then and there.
But Seunghyun took a seat on Minhwan’s other side and just started into his own cereal. Minhwan shifted to make more room for him, but shyly looked towards Jonghun instead. Jonghun caught his slightly panicked gaze out of the corner of his eye and pounded him on the back.
“What time do we have to be ready by today?”
“Eight,” Minhwan mumbled, giving Jonghun a hurt look that would break the heart of a soldier of steel.
Jonghun, however, was immune to it, musing on how to get Hongki up and out the door instead. Even though he had gotten up, getting him up in the fashion of the living was a different matter all together. “Ugh, who wants to get Hongki?”
“Seunghyun,” Jaejin immediately piped up, giving Seunghyun a sly grin from across the coffee table. “You want to get to know him, right?”
“Don’t listen to him,” Minhwan hissed at Seunghyun, pulling on his arm so suddenly that it surprised both Jonghun and Seunghyun, who looked at the contact as though he’d just found a pot of gold. “Hongki’s satan’s child,” Minhwan turned to Jonghun. “Hyung, you do it, he listens to you.” The combined pleading faces of Seunghyun and Minhwan were enough to get him up and sliding slowly towards the door. Jaejin gave a snort.
“Whipped,” he dodged the couch pillow Minhwan threw at him and threw a language book (the first thing in reach) at him in retaliation. As the younger members started messing around behind him, Jonghun continued down the hallway, his stomach twisting. Had Jaejin realized how much he’d been trying to not hang out with Hongki as much? Did he notice that he was suddenly trying to be a leader? Did they all realize it?
He pushed Hongki’s bedroom door open and took two steps inside before he realized that Hongki was laying on his bed with just his towel on, fast asleep. The sight dropped the bottom right out of the stomach, and he backed out of the door so fast that he bumped into the picture on the wall of the other side of the hall, blushing so fast that he may have looked intoxicated. Songs and melodies, he told himself. He had to picture songs and melodies instead but all he could keep staring at was Hongki, Hongki and his well muscled back, his well toned arms, the curve of his butt under the fabric of the towel. He swallowed hard, tasting cereal, and walked back inside the room slowly.
As he crept closer, his heart beating in his throat, he could see little imperfections that made breathing all the harder because they just made Hongki even more dear to him. The moles on his back, the hair on his legs, the god damn skull nail polish that was forever present. He had a piece of hair in his mouth, and before he knew what he was doing, he lifted a trembling hand and gently pulled it out, his finger stroking Hongki’s smooth, soft cheek. The rise and fall of his chest was so peaceful that he almost didn’t want to wake him, just wanted to stand here and watch him sleep forever.
Then he realized what a creep he was being. He grabbed Hongki’s shin with one hand and jabbed two fingers into the back of his knee with the other with the loudest shout he could manage. Hongki jerked awake, flailing wildly with his limbs, kicking out at him and hitting him in the chest. His hair was still wet and plastered against his face and he sat up, giving Jonghun the biggest glare he could manage.
“What d’you want?” He grumped, running a hand through his hair, which was already sticking up all over the place. Jonghun idly pushed it down, though it just popped back up into disaray.
“Get ready, we have to go in a bit,” Jonghun said, swallowing hard as he turned away.
“Hey,” Hongki caught his wrist, and Jonghun shuddered at the contact, turning his gaze to meet his eyes.
“Yeah?”
“Are you alright?” Hongki’s eyes held suspicion. “You’ve been acting kind of...different lately.”
Jonghun sucked in a breath. So he hadn’t been imagining Jaejin’s loaded look later. “How do you know, you’re always gone.” That wasn’t what he’d meant to say. He’d meant to say that he was just tired, or that he liked boys and didn’t know how to say it - but he could never actually tell anyone that.
No one would believe it, anyway.
“I’m your best friend, I think I’d know some things.” Hongki scowled up at him. “I know when something’s bothering you anyway.”
But he was still in a towel. A barely wrapped towel. Hongki’s legs were spread wide, too, and if the towel had been one of the smaller ones, nothing would have been hidden. Nothing at all. Jonghun’s mouth was suddenly dry, which was silly, because he’d just had something to drink.
“I’m just tired,” he said. And all the while he was coming up with excuses, all he could think of was,what if he told him? What would he do? What if he told him that he liked him as much as he liked playing the piano, and the guitar, except he didn’t want to play Hongki, he wanted to kiss him, to date him, to have sex with - he pulled his arm away from Hongki’s grip.
“Jonghun!” Hongki frowned, following him and grabbing at him again. “What aren’t you telling me?” Jonghun opened his mouth to say it, to spill it all and leave it right in Hongki’s sleep deprived, exhausted, concerned face. With the look that was drilling holes right through him, he was surprised that Hongki hadn’t already discovered it.
But no, there was no way. Hongki was far too dense.
“It’s nothing, I promise. I just didn’t get enough sleep. That’s all.” He pulled out of Hongki’s reach a bit more gently this time, his skin still hot where Hongki had made contact. “We have a new member, you should at least come say hi and say sorry for slamming the door in his face.”
One look at Hongki told him that he didn’t know what he was talking about. Jonghun laughed to himself and left the room. “Hurry up, don’t be so lazy!” He poked his head back in, “and you need to change your nails. They’re flaking.” Jonghun fled down the hallway before Hongki could take his towel off and chuck it at him.
-
Returning to music after so much that wasn’t was like coming back to an old friend, or maybe an old lover. It was better here, legs propped up on the coffee table and his electric guitar sitting in his lap, in the waiting room while the stylists worked on their make up and hair and whatever else. A new song, a new stage, a new beginning. He looked at Seunghyun, chatting with Minhwan and the stylist and talking about how corn could possibly be an alien invention, and figured that all was right in the world.
Jaejin eventually chimed in to say that corn had been around before anyone thought aliens would have been on the earth, and Jonghun could only laugh as he played a soft melody, repetitive and soft, like Hongki’s hair was soft, or his skin, or his voice when he was really tired or when he was singing, softly. Even as he thought of that, the melody trapped inside kept pouring out, and he slipped into different chords, biting his lip absently.
“Hyung,” Jaejin’s voice snapped him out of his daze and his head snapped up. Jaejin was staring at him, gaping. “Hyung, that sounds amazing,” he all but dove for the composition paper in his bag and shoved the whole sheaf into his hands, sitting beside him on the couch. “Write it down, write it down quick before you forget it.”
Jonghun turned the page, brow pinching together, and bent over the paper, trying to recall what he’d just played. It was easier than he thought to recall a bunch of nonsense notes, he mused, and when he was finished, he was slightly surprised to see how much it looked vaguely like a song. A real song. One he’d been given by the company. He stared at Jaejin, wide eyed.
“We should play this, I want to play this.” Jaejin tapped it with his pencil. “Make the accompaniments, and I’ll write the lyrics, and then we can get it on a CD.”
“It’s not that good,” Jonghun started.
“It will be,” there was a spark in Jaejin’s eye that must have reached deep into the depths of his soul and pulled out the old excitement he’d had for music that he lost some time ago when Wonbin left. Or maybe it was before that - he couldn’t tell anymore.
But he threw himself into the work, arranging and rearranging and changing and rewriting in their studio whenever he had a chance after they were finished with their schedules. He didn’t need to eat, he didn’t need to sleep, all he needed to do was make his song. And when he finished, he was so tired that he wanted to die, but when he brought it home on a demo cd and showed it to the other members, nervous, afraid, scared, instead of scoffing at him, they were staring at him. Hongki wanted to applaud him.
“We should show it to the higher-ups. Maybe if we give it to them, we can use it.” Minhwan breathed, breaking the silence that followed. “It’d be amazing.”
“Right, where’s that stupid manager?” Hongki asked, looking around. When he didn’t see him, he sent Seunghyun off to find him and put his hand on Jonghun’s shoulder, squeezing. “I can’t believe you did this, you stupid guy, why didn’t you tell anyone?”
“He told me!” Jaejin piped up.
“He gave me the idea,” Jonghun reiterated, distracted by how close Hongki was, on the way his hand felt so nice over his shoulder.
“Just think, soon we can make our own songs,”
“In Japan.”
“We’ll be real musician’s,” Hongki remained unfazed, his hold tightening.
“In Japan,” Jonghun added again. There was no way Korea would ever allow them to make their own songs. There was absolutely no way.
“Whatever, this is your dream, stop being so pessimistic,” Hongki said, punching him in the back of the head. Jonghun winced at the flash of pain, but he looked up at him anyway, surprised that he remembered when he himself had forgotten.
Seunghyun then came back with the manager in tow, flushed and looking like he’d just run a mile in five minutes. Which he kind of did, in a way.
The manager ended up liking it so much that they did make the song part of the album after all, with a few tweaks and additions to make it better. Jonghun was allowed to be called the co-writer and Jaejin co-produced the lyrics. In the end, they were finally, finally on their way to what they’d always been dreamed, and suddenly everyone in the group was writing or composing.
-
One night, long after they’d gone to bed but when he couldn’t really sleep, listening to the rain against the window and thoughts full of Hongki. Hongki, when they were at Heechul’s party, Hongki, leaning over him on the airplane to get a good picture of the clouds. Hongki, smacking him with whatever was in his head. Hongki’s laugh, Hongki’s voice. Everything and nothing at the same time. He just couldn’t stop thinking about him, no matter how much he tried.
“You should write a song about him,” Seunghyun’s voice wafted over to him from his side of the room. Jonghun thought he’d dreamt it at first, but his voice came in far too sharp to be a dream voice. There was the sounds of shifting blankets and Seunghyun rolled over on his stomach to look at him. “I mean, the most popular songs are lovesongs, so I think you should do it. Confess your feelings in a song. Didn’t someone do that in a song?”
Jonghun had no idea. “Why would I do that?”
“Because you love him, hyung.” He said it so matter-of-factly, that Jonghun kind of wondered if he was human at all.
He sighed and rolled over onto his side. It had been so long since the first mention of this that he was surprised that Seunghyun still remembered. “It’s more complicated than that.” Complicated because society didn’t want an idol who was gay, not in Korea. Maybe in America, but not in Korea. He didn’t want to risk his future or music for it, now when they were finally becoming someone, not when they were finally improving.
“Who cares what they all say, hyung. It’s tearing you apart and you’re not happy, I see it every time you see Hongki-hyung leave and go somewhere without you. You’re like his tiny fairy, only you’re really tall and you don’t sparkle.” He paused. “You’re vain like tinker bell, though.”
Jonghun threw a dirty sock at him in the dark. It bounced off the window and landed on Seunghyun’s dresser. “I am not,” he said, already knowing it was a lie. It wasn’t his fault if he was born with good genes.
“Hyung, you can do it. We aren’t going to go anywhere.”
“It’s not you I’m afraid of, it’s...” He sighed in the darkness, his stomach twisting uncomfortably. He never revealed any of this. Talking about this as though it existed just meant it really did exist. He ran a hand through his hair in the darkness, tugging on it in frustration. Seunghyun was good at this. He didn’t want to admit who he was afraid of. Everyone, Hongki, his parents, his friends, the fans, his life. He couldn’t do this, could he? Could he really just throw it all aside because he had to embrace who he was?
“Hyung, it’s better to do it now before you explode, or something.” Seunghyun said, sagely.
-
It rained the next day. The perfect time to go stand outside and just think. He left while Seunghyun was playing the piano, and walked outside without a jacket and to the middle of the sidwalk and tilted his head up, closing his eyes. He could see it all, the hate, the protests, the netizen comments, the disbandment's. He could see himself having to go to the army early, or who knew.
But then, he didn’t really have to tell the whole world, because he’d be happy if just the members knew. He’d prefer it. All of this was tearing him up inside and it wasn’t disappearing. It was just staying, lodged in his throat like a piece of wood and making it harder and harder to breathe. His stomach churned at the thought of rejection. He felt sick. But the rain was pouring down his face and drenching his hair. He took a deep breath, as deep as his lungs would let him, breathing in the smell of the rain and the musk. He breathed out, slowly, and felt infinitely times better when he opened his eyes.
It was time. He had to do it tonight. If he didn’t tell them that night, then he wouldn’t get a chance. They were going to go on tour across Asia, and if nothing went wrong, then everything would be okay. He could do it. He had to do it. Seunghyun was right. It was like a cancer that had been eating him alive since he was in middle school.
He grouped the other members together in the living room, even Hongki, who sat beside him doing his best to not look worried as he examined his new nails. More skulls. Pop out skulls. Gaudy pop out skulls that glittered in the light. Hongki loved them so much, but they looked so awful. So, so awful.
He cleared his throat and glanced at Seunghyun. Nerves were stabbing tiny swords into him from the inside, all up his throat. His entire body tingled. He twisted his fingers this way and that, round and round, flexing them, kneading the skin.
“I have something I need to say,” he licked his chapped lips. He hadn’t even realized they were chapped until this moment.
He glanced up at the others and then automatically back down, unable to take their stares. He felt heat rising to his cheeks, felt his breathing starting to become more and more harsh.
“It’s okay hyung, just say it.” Seunghyun had placed himself at the other side of the couch, the side where everyone got in to walk in and out of. He’d made sure that Jonghun would go in and take a seat on the inside, so he would be pressed into the corner, unable to escape. Jonghun swallowed hard, again.
“I...am gay,” he said, forming the words and pushing them out. His blood was rushing by too loudly for him to hear himself think, but he knew for certain that he’d made the harsh ‘g’ sound, that he’d followed that up with the ay. Knew for a fact, from the widening of everyone’s eyes, that they’d heard him.
“You?” Hongki asked, incredulous. “You pick up more girls than all of us combined!”
Jonghun looked up at him, miserably. “No I don’t, I haven’t had a date since high school.”
“Like I said!” Hongki said, gesturing wildly. He wasn’t quite sure if he was able to control his actions or not, but he was sure it was a kind of shock. “Oh my god, Jonghun, why didn’t you tell me before?” He asked, standing. He ran a hand through his hair, staring at him with wide eyes. Jonghun stared back, helplessly. He wanted to throw up his entire stomach, except he hadn’t eaten so there was nothing in it. Hongki all but ran out of the apartment, slamming the door as he left.
Jonghun rubbed the back of his neck, too miserable to look at the others. “Um, hyung?” Jaejin attempted. “If it helps at all, I kind of guessed.”
He glanced up, frowning, “how?”
“You stare at people,” Jaejin laughed.
“You talk in your sleep,” Minhwan cheerfully supplied. “I think Wonbin hyung knew too.”
Jonghun opened his mouth to say something, and could only close it again. “So, only....only Hongki didn’t know?”
Seunghyun nodded, giving him as sympathetic a look as his amused gaze would allow. “It’s okay, hyung, he’ll come around. You know he will.”
Jonghun sat back in his seat, nibbling at his bottom lip. Maybe. Maybe he would, he couldn’t get his hopes up. There was no way. No way at all.
-
Hongki came back at three, smelling of cigarette smoke and soju and carrying a bunch of playboy magazines in one hand. He threw them on Jonghun’s chest from where he’d fallen asleep on the couch. Jonghun jerked awake as Hongki plopped down on top of his feet.
“What’s this?” He asked, squinting at them and waiting for his eyes to adjust to the lamp light.
“I want to see something,” Hongki said, folding his arms over his chest. Jonghun’s eyes flicked to the magazines. He sat up, pulling his feet out form under Hongki’s heavy ass, and flipped through them, groggy and stiff from the couch.
“....these are all women,” he said, giving Hongki a searching glance.
Hongki frowned, puzzled. “So you don’t get excited by looking at them?”
“Is this some kind of a test?” He asked, throwing the magazines on the coffee table. “Because I already told you, and it’s not funny, you’re not going to change it, I’ve spent long enough trying to do that believe me-” Hongki grabbed him by the collar, his eyes as dark and rich as chocolate.
He pulled him forward, so roughly that Jonghun was afraid for a moment that he was going to hit his head against something, but it wasn’t the case. Instead of the wall, Hongki changed his grips and put his hands on the sides of Jonghun’s face almost tenderly. He moved his face in close, breath ghosting across his bottom lip and chin before their lips connected. If Jonghun had ever wondered at what a kiss with a boy would have felt like, he never would have really expected the softness, or the warmth. Maybe it was because Hongki was drunk, but he had expected it to be rough, harsh, like him. He expected something quick, not the soft tender feeling around, the testing ground, the slow deepening that crept a little closer. Jonghun’s hands fisted in Hongki’s shirt at the sides. One hand moved up to cup the back of his head as he scooted closer, tilting his head and giving him all of his love, all of the longing he’d had for the past three years.
Or more.
He stopped thinking, leaning forward until he was all but on top of Hongki. He broke the kiss only when his lungs screamed at him for needing to breathe. He panted, dropping his head on his shoulder. It was only now that he realized how badly Hongki was trembling. He wrapped his arms around his waist and buried his head in the crook of his neck, letting out a short bark of a laugh.
“Oh my god, I can’t believe I just did that to you,” Jonghun whispered. Hongki’s arms wrapped around him, and he laughed, loudly, obnoxiously.
“Yeah, because you initiated it and all,” Hongki said, and Jonghun could feel his grin against his ear. Jonghun kissed him on the ear before he pulled away with a start.
“Does this mean that you’re gay, too?”
Hongki snorted, “does it look like I like them?”
Jonghun opened his mouth, and then closed it again. “Is that a trick question?”
Hongki smirked, running his hand through Jonghun’s hair. “Nope.” He kissed him again, and this time, his soul might have really grown wings and flown away.
-
Not long after, Hongki was cast in You’re Beautiful, and the company had him shafted in F.T Triple and Seunghyun sent off to do variety shows. They barely saw each other, but Jonghun made sure to call when they were watching it, because he wouldn’t miss it for the world.
If only to laugh at his acting. Because, honestly, banana’s?
-
And then, after four years of hard work, constant back and forth, becoming fluent in Japanese, after composing multiple songs and working on a full single together, there they were, the five of them. Standing on the largest stage they’d ever had the opportunity to stand on. Budokan. This was the day, this was the second, the waves upon waves of crowds, the primadonna yellow glow, the show of fireworks and stage effects and the sounds, blasting from the speakers, of their songs, of their voices, of his guitar rifts and his embellishments. It was a moment, a magical moment, and it was only made better when Hongki sauntered over to him and placed a hand on his shoulder, staring into his eyes and singing lyrics that he’d come up with himself.
There was something special to be said about the moment. Something that told him, some special taste in his mouth. It might have been from the kiss before they got on stage, or it might have just been something else, something more. Something even more powerful than a rainy day, or maybe it was just that simple love of playing for people, playing for all of the people in the world and possibly impressing them into saying, maybe, just maybe, that this is what he’s meant to do.
And maybe, it all comes down to that finite red thread that weaved in and out of a person’s life, through their heart and soul, pulling them and connecting them all and whispering in his ear:
“This is your destiny.”
jonghun’s always known that he was meant for something special, he just didn’t know what.
pg; jonghun/hongki; 10,379 words.
note: not all the facts in this are accurate. i pulled most of them off of wiki and fan sites but there were some things i couldn't find, so i just kind of, made it up. i hope you don't mind!
The first time Jonghun handled an instrument, it was an unremarkable tiny keyboard piano that made off-pitch bleeps when he held down a note for longer than three seconds. He slammed his chubby little fingers down on it over and over again for hours at a time, until he found some notes that sounded better than other ones. His mother watched, amazed, as he hit a flat note and immediately hit a regular note, as though he were trying to figure them out by sound alone.
When she tried to take the toy away at night, she told him once, many years later, he would cry and cry until she put the piano inside the crib with him, and he curled his fists around it hugged it in his sleep.
He would wake up in the middle of the night, and she’d hear him pressing keys with his chubby fingers through the baby monitor. She held her husband’s hand and couldn’t help herself for thinking, ‘My baby is special.’ Jonghun didn’t really think anything of it in middle school because every mother he’d ever met would say exactly the same thing as his. It wasn’t until later, when he was standing on stage before the roar of the full Tokyo dome showering over him, that he felt that perhaps his mother was right in saying that he was special.
-
Jonghun learned how to play the piano first. He liked the sounds it admitted, and he liked the feeling of cool keys under his fingers. He even enjoyed tuning it and could do it by ear. He learned all of the classics, and when he was tired of those and just wanted to mess around, he’d create some of his own. It was as satisfying and familiar to him as his own voice and it worked well to satisfy his cravings for more, until he found a beat up old guitar in an alleyway behind his house. He found a friend to tune it for him and bought some books on how to play guitar at a store down the street and for a whole week, all he could do was eat and breathe it until he had every chord down and could tune it by ear himself like he could the piano.
His mother always called him a little prodigy, but he’s always thought she was just being overly proud, until he picked up the guitar and played and played and played. He started to think that maybe she was right after all. It made his heart swell in the way he was sure a kiss would never, and it made his chest go tight when he played something without mistakes. But soon enough he’d make one, and then he’d think it was probably just because he would practice so often.
It wasn’t as though it was all of his life, although he felt like it sometimes. But it was so much easier to focus on music. His friends told him to go get a girlfriend, because guys who could play music had extra points in the books of everyone of the female gender. But dates were awkward, and his hand always felt strange in the hands of every girl, even though they were always pretty and always kind and really, his friends thought he was insane for never staying with the perfect girls.
They just couldn’t understand that no girl could compare to music, and his love for it. There was no contest, and even though he wanted to be in love, really wanted to, he couldn’t. He thought it was because of music until one day, when the class was changing in the gym lockers and his friends came out of the showers with nothing on but the towels around their waists.
Jonghun stared for who knows how long, until he realized it and turned back to his locker with color rising to his cheeks. Something inside of him, something he didn’t want to admit rose to the first time in his young lifetime, and he shut it down. He dressed quickly and left, claiming that he forgot something, and all but sprinted out of the room and through the hallways to the farthest bathroom. He hid in it for half of class and had to get a pass for his tardiness, but there was something there, when he looked at his friends, that he’d never really paid attention to before. Something that made him feel the same way music did, but with the potential to be even more potent.
When his friends found out about a company holding auditions for people who play musical instruments, they signed him up without letting him know. He walked into the audition room and froze, knowing full well that he wasn’t good enough for an audition like this. Unsure of what he was doing there, he almost walked right back out. What was he going to do with his life, if not music? That’s the question that made him tighten his grip on his guitar and swing it into playing position. The strings were cool and pliable under his fingers, well worn, well tuned, and he played better than he could ever remember playing in his entire life.
There was a sheen of sweat collecting on the back of his neck by the time he finished, and it slid below the strap of his guitar and under his dark hair, prickling at the back of his neck. He gave the judges a deep bow before he left, but they stopped him before he got to the door, accepting him. Shocked, amazed, a little stunned, he took the applications home to his parents and from that moment on, he was a trainee.
He should have been amazed when he was admitted to the company. He should have, he really should have, but he wasn’t. It was the moment of his dreams, just one step closer to fame and fortune and a lifetime of making music. It was just one step of many, but it brought tears to his eyes nevertheless.
His pre-debut days passed by in a blur. He continued to get better and better. His life felt like a waltz with music, some perfect version of life where music was all he could hear. People whispered about him in the hallways, saying ‘there he is, the music man’ as he passed them by. He wouldn’t let it bother him, because it was some kind of a compliment, if an obsession can be something to be complimented for.
But if he thought that playing alone was a great experience, the first time he played with Jaejin and Minhwan, both of them two other skilled (and young) trainee’s, it was as though he’d transcended into a whole new level of existence. Something was missing, a voice, but it was fine with him , because Minhwan was as steady with the drums as he seems with everything else in his life, and Jaejin accompanied him with the lower base line, weaving in and out of his guitar, and there was definitely something special about being lead by the beat of the drum that he’d never felt before, some sort of a lifeline that he sticks to, even moves to, and when the song ended he just wanted to keep on playing. Stopping now and he’d feel as though he were cheated.
He turned to Jaejin and Minhwan and he wasn’t positive if there were in his eyes or not like there were in theirs, but the only thing he can think of is, “wow, we were great.” His cheeks were flushed red and he couldn’t stop smiling.
They all laughed and hugged, and all Jonghun wanted to do was keep on playing without stopping.
-
Hongki appeared into their lives not long after that, and he was loud and obnoxious but the first time Jonghun heard his voice, he started to believe in true love. He was playing his acoustic when Hongki came over to him, weaving his hips to the gentle music over and put his hands on his shoulders and rocked back and forth to the beat while he sang with all he could possibly give. Jonghun bit his lip and resisted the urge to kiss him, because that was something that seemed far too bold, something completely new, an insecurity he wasn’t sure he could get into, not in the middle of a song. Nevertheless his fingers faltered and skipped an entire three measures before he could get them working again.
Meeting Wonbin was awkward, because they’re both very quiet. Unlike Hongki, who was loud and obnoxious, at first the only thing Jonghun knew about Wonbin was that he wanted to be a singer but the company urged him to continue guitar so he could debut. Awkwardly, he told Wonbin about the time he proposed to his girlfriend by writing music for her and how she ignored it. It was a sad story in his opinion, but it made Wonbin laugh and Jonghun figured it would be okay, so long as it broke the ice between them. Wonbin liked to play soccer, and Jonghun had two left feet, so when they went out to the field to play, it was mostly an embarrassment for him but it made the other boy happy, which was enough to make them fast friends too, even if it was a bit unconventional and ended in a bloody nose for him.
There was something about Wonbin that told him he didn’t really want to make music. Either it was the coldness in the way he played his instrument, or the envious looks he’d give Hongki when he was called for singing practice when Wonbin would be shafted into rap. The five of them were starting to think something was up, when the management declared them ready to debut into a band called five treasure island. He could barely pronounce the name, but he tried them out in his mouth anyway, slowly sounding them out with so much concentration (English wasn’t his strong point) that he completely missed that he was named leader.
It wasn’t until Hongki slapped him on the back roughly that his snaps up.
“Wha-?” He blinked at him, swivelling around in his chair to elbow him in the ribs. “What are you doing?”
“Congratulations, leader,” Hongki grinned as bright as can be and Jonghun gaped at him. At the hard edge to his smile, and the jealousy that he was hiding in his eyes.
Him? A leader? A leader of four boys? “No, no way.” He turned his attention to the manager who just nodded at him with a serious expression. He knew he wasn’t suited for it, everyone knew it. He was just doing this for the music, he thought they all knew that. The music and nothing else - that was his oath.
But at the same time he was reasserting his place in the world to himself, Jaejin and Minhwan floped on him from behind, knocking him off his chair with a shriek. They all laughed as Hongki and Wonbin both join them in the dog pile and Jaejin whispers in his ear, something he could never forget. “Hyung, we did it, we’re going to be idols.”
And for the first time, squished under the weight of four other (heavy) boys who crushed his lungs and ribs and everything else, his heart felt weightless, as though it could float right out of his chest and fly away, leaving him here. There was something about it, the way Jaejin was complaining in his ear about Wonbin’s foot in his face, and the way he can barely breathe, and Hongki’s loud laughter, and Minhwan’s quiet complaints, and Wonbin’s victorious hooting.
-
The next months leading up to May were some of the most difficult he’d ever been through, and they’d been in the recording studio so often that he was pretty sure they could just live in it instead of the dorm. He was so busy that he didn’t realize that they hadn’t been taking care of their bodies until he was playing the guitar while recording and his pick began to slip and slide in his fingers and they hurt so much that he was pretty sure they just fell off. He glanced down, only to see that they were bleeding, a lot. Enough for red to stain his guitar with the dark color.
He hit a sharp and let his fingers fall away from the strings and hang at his sides. He stepped back from the recording equipment, the haze of constant music and melodies and never ending re-do’s blurring together in his mind that he began to realize he’d started to lose sight of what he loved, music. Something was wrong, and it was on the tip of his tongue when he looked at the others. He’d been spending most of his time believing that they didn’t really need a leader, that they could lead themselves.
“I think we should stop,” he breathes into the mic, his eyes on the members instead of the producers. They were huddled in the chairs in the back of the room, either sleeping or reading sheet music. Hongki was the only one that was watching him, surprisingly, because he was usually on the phone with someone else or texting or playing a game. He tried to pretend that didn’t bother him, because he’s not Hongki’s parent, he’s his friend, and he could do whatever he wanted. But Minhwan was curled up in the chair beside him, wrapped up in a little blanket and he looked so young, so very young, that Jonghun’s heart hurt a little that he hadn’t noticed it before. He was more than just their friends, he was their leader.
His gaze lingered on Hongki’s, and he noticed the beginning of something he couldn’t really put his finger on. Or perhaps it had started from the beginning, but Jonghun has always only known music, and he just guessed at everything else. He didn’t want to deal with anything else. He stepped away from the recording equipment and tried in vain to open the door but couldn’t as his fingers were too slick twist the brass handle on the door. He should have felt a lot more pathetic than he did when Hongki twisted the handle for him to let him out.
There was a second, where Jonghun thought he might have imagined it, where they both just stopped and stared at one another. Hongki was wearing a beanie and his fingers were painted black - Jonghun’s realized a few weeks after their first meeting that he has a strange affinity with painting his nails with loud and outrageous things. It made his long fingers stand out, but more than that, the dark sweater he was wearing brought out how pale he was and the bags under his eyes. It filled him with a sudden anger that was suddenly so hard to control that he shook as he fought it back into nonexistence.
“What, you can’t even open a door?” Hongki asked, and his lips were dry enough to be in a desert. Hongki glanced down at his hands, and he remembered that they were bleeding just slowly enough for him to pull them out of reach before they were grabbed.
Jonghun brushed past him and curled his hands into fists so that the producers and managers wouldn’t see his fingers.
“Jonghun,” Hongki frowned, leaning against the back of the door as he shuts it behind him. Jonghun can hear the concern flooding his voice.
Jonghun just smiled to himself and pulled a tissue out of the box on the table. He felt like a real artist, for some reason, although his fingers stung horribly. He played too much. That was it. Instead of taking it easy like Jaejin, whose fingers had built up a steady resistance, Jonghun played constantly, every day, from morning to night, even when he had no need to. Even when he was supposed to be resting. He couldn’t stop. It made him calm. It kept his thoughts from other things he rather didn’t think about.
Their manager was watching him with an unreadable expression as he tossed the kleenex in the trash.
“Alright, get the kids,” is all he says, and turned to have a word with the producers who looked just as exhausted as they were. It was the first time Jonghun had spoken up on behalf of the others, and it could have easily been ignored if everyone weren’t in agreement. Perhaps the others had seen the way Minhwan looked like he was going to fall apart, or perhaps they saw the way Jaejin had a growing bruise on his shoulder, or the way Wonbin had been practicing his raps so much that his voice had gone hoarse? But if they’d seen it, they would have stopped. They would have given them a break.
That night, in the dorm while, waiting to use the bathroom, he came up from a crouch with his pyjama’s in hand to find Hongki standing behind him. His face was partially hidden from his hair until he flipped his bangs out of his eyes back and gave him a smile that flashed his sharp canines. His hands brushed Jonghun’s and lifted them up. Jonghun supressed the strange fluttering somewhere under his ribcage that he refuses to think about.
“Thanks,” he grinned, jerking a thumb behind him at the passed out Jaejin. “They were really tired.”
Jonghun laughed, “like you’re not.”
He breaks contact to pull his shirt over his head and drop it in the hamper. Cold air brushed against his bare chest. He resisted the urge to shiver. Then Hongki put his hand on his chest and suddenly, all of the chilliness disappeared with a rush of warmth at the contact. Hongki felt his abdomen.
“What do you do?” He asked, ogling at the muscles.
“Be awesome?” Jonghun attempted to joke, flinching away from Hongki’s fist. Hongki caught his bandaged fingers as he tried to escape.
“Hello Kitty?” He quirked an eyebrow and shot him an amused grin. “Are you a girl, or something?”
“I needed to match your fingernails for gaudiness,” he ventured, deflecting another punch.
“My nails are awesome,” Hongki exclaimed with a slap, and Jonghun just laughed at him and turned away to pull a nightshirt over his head. “But really,” Hongki’s voice went soft. “Thanks for today. I was starting to think I should have been leader after all, but you’re a man after all, aren’t you?”
Jonghun turned to him, surprised. “You didn’t think I could be?”
Hongki placed one hand on his hip and the other ran through his hair. “I didn’t think you thought you could be.”
Jonghun stared at the slightly embarrassed expression on Hongki’s face. “Well, I didn’t think you thought I thought I couldn’t be.”
Jonghun escaped as Hongki fumbled to figure out what he said. His heart was beating as though it were going to beat right out of his chest, and his blood was rushing in his ears. He leaned against the wall and tried his hardest not to think of it, but Hongki’s hand on his chest made songs come out of his soul, or something cheesy like that.
It wouldn’t work.
He was sure about it. He liked girls, he really did. He liked to look at girly magazines and he liked porn on occasion, it was just that he didn’t have the time to be around them anymore. There were girl trainees but they were all younger than him, and he was preparing for debut. He was going to be a star. He had to focus on music, and that was it.
He suppressed the feelings, the bad, bad feelings, and listened to muse until he fell asleep with the music still blaring from his earbuds.
-
On May 27, 2007 they had their first live showcase, and following that, their album was released along with their first stage on a broadcasting network. It was odd, playing without being plugged in. No one would hear it, no one but they would ever be able to hear what they sounded like that day. It was almost disheartening, except he knew that with these would come live concerts, and that was enough. They were still their songs, no matter if they couldn’t hear them. Girls were still screaming their names, the cameras were still pointed at them. And they had concerts at livehouses, and those were some of the best places. The stages were small, the speakers were loud and vibrated music right through him as though he didn’t exist, and the crowds screamed and ate it all up. The feeling of playing in front of a crowd of people, even if there were only ten people in the crowd, was one of the most amazing feelings he’d ever had.
But that wasn’t enough for some of them.
Wonbin’d had trouble from day one - and Jonghun knew it, somehow. But sometime after their first debut in Japan, even though they’d had great success. Although their album had done well in sales, Wonbin was growing more and more unhappy. Jonghun was okay with being the member that wouldn’t always be in the spotlight. Hongki was personable, he was strange, he was a head-turner. He was their vocal and their head and it was the job of the vocalist - as far as Jonghun knew, Hongki didn’t mind it, either. But Wonbin didn’t want to be a background member. They all knew it.
One night, Jonghun was curled up outside on the porch, watching the city lights, when Wonbin joined him. It had been another day of Japanese practice and music recording, and Jonghun could see the strain before he’d said anything. Wonbin sat next to him, throwing his legs through the bars in the fencing and sitting back on his elbows, looking up towards the tips of the skyscrapers and the night sky.
“I don’t want to do this anymore,” was all he said. There was a defeatist tone to his words that Jonghun had never heard before. Fighter Wonbin, strong man, the manly member in the group - wanting to quit. Jonghun had ignored all the previous signs, but here he was, telling him, the unrightful leader of their merry band of horrors.
Jonghun watched his profile for a long time, but Wonbin didn’t say anymore, they just sat in silence. A thought occurred to Jonghun that he’d been waiting to say that to someone he could trust, someone who he thought could deal with it.
“We need you,” he finally said, sitting up a bit so he could put a hand on his shoulder. It was warm under his palm.
“Yeah right,” Wonbin laughed. “You’ll get on well enough.” He said, a twinkle in his eye. “You guys have Hongki.”
Jonghun detected the slight bitterness in his tone. “You guys are friends,” he frowned.
“We’re co-workers,” Wonbin clarified, and Jonghun sucked in a breathe to know that that was how Wonbin had thought of them all while he was here, living and working with them. A twenty-four hour job, seven days a week, no holidays.
It was no wonder that he didn’t want to do it anymore.
“You have to do what you have to do,” Jonghun said after a long pause while he was mulling everything else. Wonbin was the same age as both Hongki and him, and they were all close friends, or so he thought. “But you have to keep in touch,” he elbowed him in the side.
Wonbin laughed, rubbing at the back of his neck. “Don’t worry, I always will.” He smiled, although it faded soon enough as he stared at the clouds. “Minhwan is going to hate me.”
Jonghun shrugged. “He’ll get over it. So will we.”
Wonbin laughed and slung an arm around Jonghun’s shoulders. He detected the scent of his cologne and fought the blush rising to his cheeks. Wonbin was warm, always warm. Even when he was leaving them, he was so warm that it wasn’t fair. His heart was just that big, was all. It was a condition.
“Maybe you do make a good leader after all,” he said with a grin, fluffling Jonghun’s hair before he left to go to bed.
It took a little while, there were a lot of hoops to jump through and many tears, they were in the middle of promotions for their single and such, but finally the official word went out that Wonbin left for differences in musical taste - but they all knew that he hadn’t signed up for a gig like this. They could all feel it from day one, even though they tried their best to make it better.
Minhwan was particularly hurt. Maybe heartbroken, maybe worse. Jonghun had been playing nonsense on the keyboard when the youngest came in and took a seat in the room.
For a long time, there was no noise, only the light piano playing. Finally, Minhwan scooted next to him on the bench and started to play with him.
“I miss him, hyung,” Minhwan said, and Jonghun, at a loss, pulled him into a crushing hug.
“You can always visit him,” Jonghun said, “or call him. He’ll be there,” Minhwan sniffled against his neck.
“We’re too busy for that,” he whispered, and Jonghun rubbed his back, wondering if he was giving the right advice or not. “It’ll be okay,” he said, even though he didn’t believe it. “It’ll just take time.”
He wasn’t good at giving advice. Instead, he taught Minhwan how to play a song on the piano to pass the time.
-
In the time before Seunghyun came, the group practiced Japanese and had a sort of vacation that they never really had. Jonghun wasn’t certain if he liked going to Japan to promote at first, but it only took a few times to realize how much freedom they had over there. How everything was so different, even if their countries were so close. It was different, in a nicer way. He couldn’t really explain it.
“Maybe it’s because it rains more there,” Jaejin said from the couch, munching on some french fries. “I mean, you’ve always liked the rain.”
Jonghun lifted his head from it’s place on armrest of the other couch. He was sprawled along the soft piece of furnature, his long legs sticking over the other arm. “Does it really rain more there?”
“Whenever we go there, it’s raining,” Jaejin grinned, and flopped his legs out. “What did you say? Rain makes you manly?”
Hongki snorted from the kitchen, inhaling milk. Minhwan saved him from an untimely death with a few well placed slaps on the back. “Be more careful, hyung. I don’t want you to die.” Jonghun felt a little queasy in his stomach, a sharp, sudden pain in his abdomen. He bent his head backwards to look into the kitchen.
“He okay?” He asked, not wanting to get up even though panic had seized his nerves.
Hongki ran over as soon as his throat was clear and sat on his stomach. Jonghun squawked, feeling his cheeks go red and his heart start to beat louder in his chest. He wondered if Hongki could hear it. If he could feel it.
“Get off,” he moaned, trying not to sound too desperate. “You’re butt is crushing me.” In response, Hongki wiggled his butt down into his abdomen a little more.
Jonghun felt dizzy. Whatever was happening to him, all of the repressed emotions flared up in him at once and broke whatever dam he’d constructed to hold them at bay, because it left him breathless. He’d like to think that he’d been in love before. He’d been in relationships with women, and he’d like to think that he’d loved them, although he’d been too young, maybe just a little too naive to think that what he felt then was love, when what he felt now was so much more vibrant that it hurt.
“Hongki,” he said, and something in his voice must have triggered Hongki’s interest enough to get him to stop laughing. Their gazes locked, and Jonghun pushed him off, unable to take it. The singer flopped over onto his legs and shot back with a foot near his face, but his hand was on his thigh, so Jonghun couldn’t even care about the foot when he was going senseless. He pulled himself up, flushed and breathless.
“I have to go to the bathroom,” he bit out, and all but ran to the room, locked the door and leaned his back against it. His heart was still thumping, and his image in the mirror across from him told him everything he already knew but had attempted to suppress since they’d met. He ran a hand across his face, through his hair, and down to rub at the back of his neck.
There was a distinct tingling throbbing through him, different than music, different than any love he’d ever experienced, different, even, than lust. He couldn’t put his finger on it, whatever it was. The feeling that wouldn’t stop making the world rush by his ears as though he’d stepped into a vacuum, or the throbbing of his flesh where Hongki had taken a seat on him. And most certainly, he shouldn’t have felt the way he did, all the way down to his groin. He ran the water on cold and dunked his head into the sink, trying to come to terms with it.
He raised his head, pinched his cheeks, slapped the sides of his head with the sides of his hands. The idea stuck. It sounded right, but he didn’t - couldn’t - admit it. Admitting it would be like admitting that he’d never had sex before. And certainly not the kind of sex his body wanted with a certain person. Hongki.
But Hongki wasn’t like him. Even though Hongki had been raised by a loving family just like him, and even though Hongki had friends and liked music and liked nail polish and styling his hair and going shopping and picking out outfits, even though his hands were always warm and comfortable on his skin and even though Hongki liked to lay all over him, Hongki wasn’t gay.
But Jonghun was.
He squished his cheeks together in the mirror. This kind of thing was why he ought to focus on only music. Only music and girls and how cute they are and being manly for them because that was what guys were supposed to do. Be manly. Unlike he was. The world was too complex, it was better to keep it simple. It was better not to think about certain socially unacceptable facts, not when he was an idol living in a fast paced idol world where the only passion he was going to have time for was for was music. Music, music, only music.
He jumped at a knock on the door, bumping up against the back counter.
“Hyung, are you taking a shower?” Jaejin asked.
“Um, no,” he said, resting his head against the cold glass of the mirror, wishing something would just reach out of it and whisk him off to some other reality.
“Are you...you know.”
“What? No, I’ll be right out,” he said, putting as much optimism as he could into his voice. “I’m fixing my hair.”
“Okay, but just so you know, manager hyung said the new member is going to be in your room.” Jaejin’s footsteps shuffled away from the door, and Jonghun returned to panic mode. Another boy in his room, now, when he was trying to pay attention to his crisis. He was going to go to hell and back again, he just knew it.
He left the bathroom with sullen steps and rejoined the others in the living room. The minute he sat down next to Hongki, he put his head in Jonghun’s lap, flipping idly through a fashion magazine. Jonghun fought sparks, curling his toes against the floor uncomfortably. Hongki’s head was so warm, and so heavy, and his eyelashes were so long and curled ever so slightly. His ugly painted nails flashed as he flipped through the booklet, the skull on the thumb grinning at him almost knowingly. He turned his attention to somewhere else, and the only place his eyes would go was Hongki’s lips. They looked far too soft for lips, and he wondered if they were as soft as they looked, or if it was some cosmetic talking. They were a rosy red, which made them stand out against his skin, and Jonghun couldn’t think of anything but leaning down and covering those lips up with his own in a firm, unwavering kiss. A kiss that would tell him just how he felt so that he wouldn’t have to endure the torture of stupid questions.
He realized that he was staring when their eyes met. A jolt that felt too real to not be an electric shot ran up his spine, and he swallowed, unable to look away. Hongki dropped the magazine onto his stomach (Jonghun wasn’t surprised to see Song Ji Hyo on the cover.
Which sat him right back into reality with a slap, for sure. Her pretty face, framed by long, flowing hair. Hongki’s ideal woman - or one of them, anyway - stared at him and he finally managed to look away from Hongki. Instead, he watched Minhwan in the kitchen, making something or other. It smelled like chicken, whatever it was.
“What are you making?” He called to him, letting his head fall against the back of his couch and ignoring the lump in his throat, as well as Hongki’s burning questioning gaze.
“Chicken stirfry,” Minhwan called, stirring something in the pan.
“Don’t burn yourself,” Jonghun called, and when he looked across to Jaejin, the bassist just quirked an eyebrow at him from over his game.
“I’m bored,” Hongki whined, after a long silence. He sat up and slapped Jonghun in the shoulder before walking off with his cellphone in hand. He was already going through his contacts. Ten minutes later he was out the door and Jaejin was in the kitchen, stealing food from Minhwan.
-
Hongki was still gone when Seunghyun arrived. Jonghun missed him, mostly because Hongki would dispel the awkward silence that followed his meeting. Just from looking at him, Jonghun could tell that he wasn’t exactly the epitome of normalcy. Which was kind of a good thing, because none of them were really normal, not even Minhwan.
“My best features are my eyes and chin,” Seunghyun said by way of introducing himself. Minhwan stared at him from the corner of the couch, and Jonghun was pretty sure that he knew how he felt. But it couldn’t be helped. He put a hand on Seunghyun’s shoulder and led him to his room, which they had moved around to make room for his bed and things. It was small, and cramped, but Seunghyun didn’t have much.
-
That night, Jonghun was laying on his side, fingers hidden under his pillow, when Seunghyun slipped out of bed and poked him in the back. “Hyung, will I do a good job?” Seunghyun asked, and even though the darkness was hiding his face it didn’t take a genius to realize how afraid and nervous he’d been. It struck Jonghun just how young Seunghyun was, too young to face the hate involved with joining an already established group, for sure.
What he really meant to ask was, “Will I be accepted,” but neither of them mentioned it.
Jonghun found his shoulder in the darkness and gave it a squeeze. “Do you like music?”
“Hyung, music is my life.”
Jonghun smiled, wishing he could still say the same. “Then you’ll be great. Trust me.”
Seunghyun touched his hand for a moment, and the warmth that was left there was enough to keep his hands warm for the rest of the night, until he was woken up by his covers being ripped off of him, as usual.
-
Hongki welcomed Seunghyun into the group by slamming the bathroom door in his face, and the newest member joined the rest of them in the kitchen with a sullen look, leaning against the corner and trying in vain to hide his crestfallen look. Jonghun frowned, wondering if, maybe, he could talk to Hongki about it.
“He’s not usually this bad,” he started.
Jaejin interjected, munching on pop tarts. “Yeah he is.”
Jonghun frowned at him. “No, he’s not.”
“It’s morning, he is.” Jaejin’s eyes twinkled with something that Jonghun couldn’t really place. Jonghun laughed, handing Seunghyun the milk.
“You’re right,” he thought of all the times Hongki had abused him in some way before noon. “He is.” Maybe it was the lack of sleep, or the early morning sluggishness, but a soft smile made it’s way to his face without his realizing it. Maybe it was because he was thinking of the time Hongki had thrown a remote at his head, or when he punched him with amazing accuracy in the nose while still asleep, but something made Seunghyun lean in close and whisper to him:
“Hyung, you look lovestruck.”
Jonghun started, straightening up so suddenly that they nearly bumped heads. He stared at Seunghyun, and Seunghyun stared back with a smile that sent a chill up his back.
“I’m sleepy,” he said, suddenly very interested in stirring the cereal in his bowl, and escaped to sit on the other side of Minhwan on the couch to get away from him. His heart was pounding like an unsteady beat, and all he could think was how dead he was going to be when Seunghyun told the others, and he wondered if they’d kick him out of the group and if they’d find someone better to replace him when the company found out, and if that would be the end of all of his dreams, right then and there.
But Seunghyun took a seat on Minhwan’s other side and just started into his own cereal. Minhwan shifted to make more room for him, but shyly looked towards Jonghun instead. Jonghun caught his slightly panicked gaze out of the corner of his eye and pounded him on the back.
“What time do we have to be ready by today?”
“Eight,” Minhwan mumbled, giving Jonghun a hurt look that would break the heart of a soldier of steel.
Jonghun, however, was immune to it, musing on how to get Hongki up and out the door instead. Even though he had gotten up, getting him up in the fashion of the living was a different matter all together. “Ugh, who wants to get Hongki?”
“Seunghyun,” Jaejin immediately piped up, giving Seunghyun a sly grin from across the coffee table. “You want to get to know him, right?”
“Don’t listen to him,” Minhwan hissed at Seunghyun, pulling on his arm so suddenly that it surprised both Jonghun and Seunghyun, who looked at the contact as though he’d just found a pot of gold. “Hongki’s satan’s child,” Minhwan turned to Jonghun. “Hyung, you do it, he listens to you.” The combined pleading faces of Seunghyun and Minhwan were enough to get him up and sliding slowly towards the door. Jaejin gave a snort.
“Whipped,” he dodged the couch pillow Minhwan threw at him and threw a language book (the first thing in reach) at him in retaliation. As the younger members started messing around behind him, Jonghun continued down the hallway, his stomach twisting. Had Jaejin realized how much he’d been trying to not hang out with Hongki as much? Did he notice that he was suddenly trying to be a leader? Did they all realize it?
He pushed Hongki’s bedroom door open and took two steps inside before he realized that Hongki was laying on his bed with just his towel on, fast asleep. The sight dropped the bottom right out of the stomach, and he backed out of the door so fast that he bumped into the picture on the wall of the other side of the hall, blushing so fast that he may have looked intoxicated. Songs and melodies, he told himself. He had to picture songs and melodies instead but all he could keep staring at was Hongki, Hongki and his well muscled back, his well toned arms, the curve of his butt under the fabric of the towel. He swallowed hard, tasting cereal, and walked back inside the room slowly.
As he crept closer, his heart beating in his throat, he could see little imperfections that made breathing all the harder because they just made Hongki even more dear to him. The moles on his back, the hair on his legs, the god damn skull nail polish that was forever present. He had a piece of hair in his mouth, and before he knew what he was doing, he lifted a trembling hand and gently pulled it out, his finger stroking Hongki’s smooth, soft cheek. The rise and fall of his chest was so peaceful that he almost didn’t want to wake him, just wanted to stand here and watch him sleep forever.
Then he realized what a creep he was being. He grabbed Hongki’s shin with one hand and jabbed two fingers into the back of his knee with the other with the loudest shout he could manage. Hongki jerked awake, flailing wildly with his limbs, kicking out at him and hitting him in the chest. His hair was still wet and plastered against his face and he sat up, giving Jonghun the biggest glare he could manage.
“What d’you want?” He grumped, running a hand through his hair, which was already sticking up all over the place. Jonghun idly pushed it down, though it just popped back up into disaray.
“Get ready, we have to go in a bit,” Jonghun said, swallowing hard as he turned away.
“Hey,” Hongki caught his wrist, and Jonghun shuddered at the contact, turning his gaze to meet his eyes.
“Yeah?”
“Are you alright?” Hongki’s eyes held suspicion. “You’ve been acting kind of...different lately.”
Jonghun sucked in a breath. So he hadn’t been imagining Jaejin’s loaded look later. “How do you know, you’re always gone.” That wasn’t what he’d meant to say. He’d meant to say that he was just tired, or that he liked boys and didn’t know how to say it - but he could never actually tell anyone that.
No one would believe it, anyway.
“I’m your best friend, I think I’d know some things.” Hongki scowled up at him. “I know when something’s bothering you anyway.”
But he was still in a towel. A barely wrapped towel. Hongki’s legs were spread wide, too, and if the towel had been one of the smaller ones, nothing would have been hidden. Nothing at all. Jonghun’s mouth was suddenly dry, which was silly, because he’d just had something to drink.
“I’m just tired,” he said. And all the while he was coming up with excuses, all he could think of was,what if he told him? What would he do? What if he told him that he liked him as much as he liked playing the piano, and the guitar, except he didn’t want to play Hongki, he wanted to kiss him, to date him, to have sex with - he pulled his arm away from Hongki’s grip.
“Jonghun!” Hongki frowned, following him and grabbing at him again. “What aren’t you telling me?” Jonghun opened his mouth to say it, to spill it all and leave it right in Hongki’s sleep deprived, exhausted, concerned face. With the look that was drilling holes right through him, he was surprised that Hongki hadn’t already discovered it.
But no, there was no way. Hongki was far too dense.
“It’s nothing, I promise. I just didn’t get enough sleep. That’s all.” He pulled out of Hongki’s reach a bit more gently this time, his skin still hot where Hongki had made contact. “We have a new member, you should at least come say hi and say sorry for slamming the door in his face.”
One look at Hongki told him that he didn’t know what he was talking about. Jonghun laughed to himself and left the room. “Hurry up, don’t be so lazy!” He poked his head back in, “and you need to change your nails. They’re flaking.” Jonghun fled down the hallway before Hongki could take his towel off and chuck it at him.
-
Returning to music after so much that wasn’t was like coming back to an old friend, or maybe an old lover. It was better here, legs propped up on the coffee table and his electric guitar sitting in his lap, in the waiting room while the stylists worked on their make up and hair and whatever else. A new song, a new stage, a new beginning. He looked at Seunghyun, chatting with Minhwan and the stylist and talking about how corn could possibly be an alien invention, and figured that all was right in the world.
Jaejin eventually chimed in to say that corn had been around before anyone thought aliens would have been on the earth, and Jonghun could only laugh as he played a soft melody, repetitive and soft, like Hongki’s hair was soft, or his skin, or his voice when he was really tired or when he was singing, softly. Even as he thought of that, the melody trapped inside kept pouring out, and he slipped into different chords, biting his lip absently.
“Hyung,” Jaejin’s voice snapped him out of his daze and his head snapped up. Jaejin was staring at him, gaping. “Hyung, that sounds amazing,” he all but dove for the composition paper in his bag and shoved the whole sheaf into his hands, sitting beside him on the couch. “Write it down, write it down quick before you forget it.”
Jonghun turned the page, brow pinching together, and bent over the paper, trying to recall what he’d just played. It was easier than he thought to recall a bunch of nonsense notes, he mused, and when he was finished, he was slightly surprised to see how much it looked vaguely like a song. A real song. One he’d been given by the company. He stared at Jaejin, wide eyed.
“We should play this, I want to play this.” Jaejin tapped it with his pencil. “Make the accompaniments, and I’ll write the lyrics, and then we can get it on a CD.”
“It’s not that good,” Jonghun started.
“It will be,” there was a spark in Jaejin’s eye that must have reached deep into the depths of his soul and pulled out the old excitement he’d had for music that he lost some time ago when Wonbin left. Or maybe it was before that - he couldn’t tell anymore.
But he threw himself into the work, arranging and rearranging and changing and rewriting in their studio whenever he had a chance after they were finished with their schedules. He didn’t need to eat, he didn’t need to sleep, all he needed to do was make his song. And when he finished, he was so tired that he wanted to die, but when he brought it home on a demo cd and showed it to the other members, nervous, afraid, scared, instead of scoffing at him, they were staring at him. Hongki wanted to applaud him.
“We should show it to the higher-ups. Maybe if we give it to them, we can use it.” Minhwan breathed, breaking the silence that followed. “It’d be amazing.”
“Right, where’s that stupid manager?” Hongki asked, looking around. When he didn’t see him, he sent Seunghyun off to find him and put his hand on Jonghun’s shoulder, squeezing. “I can’t believe you did this, you stupid guy, why didn’t you tell anyone?”
“He told me!” Jaejin piped up.
“He gave me the idea,” Jonghun reiterated, distracted by how close Hongki was, on the way his hand felt so nice over his shoulder.
“Just think, soon we can make our own songs,”
“In Japan.”
“We’ll be real musician’s,” Hongki remained unfazed, his hold tightening.
“In Japan,” Jonghun added again. There was no way Korea would ever allow them to make their own songs. There was absolutely no way.
“Whatever, this is your dream, stop being so pessimistic,” Hongki said, punching him in the back of the head. Jonghun winced at the flash of pain, but he looked up at him anyway, surprised that he remembered when he himself had forgotten.
Seunghyun then came back with the manager in tow, flushed and looking like he’d just run a mile in five minutes. Which he kind of did, in a way.
The manager ended up liking it so much that they did make the song part of the album after all, with a few tweaks and additions to make it better. Jonghun was allowed to be called the co-writer and Jaejin co-produced the lyrics. In the end, they were finally, finally on their way to what they’d always been dreamed, and suddenly everyone in the group was writing or composing.
-
One night, long after they’d gone to bed but when he couldn’t really sleep, listening to the rain against the window and thoughts full of Hongki. Hongki, when they were at Heechul’s party, Hongki, leaning over him on the airplane to get a good picture of the clouds. Hongki, smacking him with whatever was in his head. Hongki’s laugh, Hongki’s voice. Everything and nothing at the same time. He just couldn’t stop thinking about him, no matter how much he tried.
“You should write a song about him,” Seunghyun’s voice wafted over to him from his side of the room. Jonghun thought he’d dreamt it at first, but his voice came in far too sharp to be a dream voice. There was the sounds of shifting blankets and Seunghyun rolled over on his stomach to look at him. “I mean, the most popular songs are lovesongs, so I think you should do it. Confess your feelings in a song. Didn’t someone do that in a song?”
Jonghun had no idea. “Why would I do that?”
“Because you love him, hyung.” He said it so matter-of-factly, that Jonghun kind of wondered if he was human at all.
He sighed and rolled over onto his side. It had been so long since the first mention of this that he was surprised that Seunghyun still remembered. “It’s more complicated than that.” Complicated because society didn’t want an idol who was gay, not in Korea. Maybe in America, but not in Korea. He didn’t want to risk his future or music for it, now when they were finally becoming someone, not when they were finally improving.
“Who cares what they all say, hyung. It’s tearing you apart and you’re not happy, I see it every time you see Hongki-hyung leave and go somewhere without you. You’re like his tiny fairy, only you’re really tall and you don’t sparkle.” He paused. “You’re vain like tinker bell, though.”
Jonghun threw a dirty sock at him in the dark. It bounced off the window and landed on Seunghyun’s dresser. “I am not,” he said, already knowing it was a lie. It wasn’t his fault if he was born with good genes.
“Hyung, you can do it. We aren’t going to go anywhere.”
“It’s not you I’m afraid of, it’s...” He sighed in the darkness, his stomach twisting uncomfortably. He never revealed any of this. Talking about this as though it existed just meant it really did exist. He ran a hand through his hair in the darkness, tugging on it in frustration. Seunghyun was good at this. He didn’t want to admit who he was afraid of. Everyone, Hongki, his parents, his friends, the fans, his life. He couldn’t do this, could he? Could he really just throw it all aside because he had to embrace who he was?
“Hyung, it’s better to do it now before you explode, or something.” Seunghyun said, sagely.
-
It rained the next day. The perfect time to go stand outside and just think. He left while Seunghyun was playing the piano, and walked outside without a jacket and to the middle of the sidwalk and tilted his head up, closing his eyes. He could see it all, the hate, the protests, the netizen comments, the disbandment's. He could see himself having to go to the army early, or who knew.
But then, he didn’t really have to tell the whole world, because he’d be happy if just the members knew. He’d prefer it. All of this was tearing him up inside and it wasn’t disappearing. It was just staying, lodged in his throat like a piece of wood and making it harder and harder to breathe. His stomach churned at the thought of rejection. He felt sick. But the rain was pouring down his face and drenching his hair. He took a deep breath, as deep as his lungs would let him, breathing in the smell of the rain and the musk. He breathed out, slowly, and felt infinitely times better when he opened his eyes.
It was time. He had to do it tonight. If he didn’t tell them that night, then he wouldn’t get a chance. They were going to go on tour across Asia, and if nothing went wrong, then everything would be okay. He could do it. He had to do it. Seunghyun was right. It was like a cancer that had been eating him alive since he was in middle school.
He grouped the other members together in the living room, even Hongki, who sat beside him doing his best to not look worried as he examined his new nails. More skulls. Pop out skulls. Gaudy pop out skulls that glittered in the light. Hongki loved them so much, but they looked so awful. So, so awful.
He cleared his throat and glanced at Seunghyun. Nerves were stabbing tiny swords into him from the inside, all up his throat. His entire body tingled. He twisted his fingers this way and that, round and round, flexing them, kneading the skin.
“I have something I need to say,” he licked his chapped lips. He hadn’t even realized they were chapped until this moment.
He glanced up at the others and then automatically back down, unable to take their stares. He felt heat rising to his cheeks, felt his breathing starting to become more and more harsh.
“It’s okay hyung, just say it.” Seunghyun had placed himself at the other side of the couch, the side where everyone got in to walk in and out of. He’d made sure that Jonghun would go in and take a seat on the inside, so he would be pressed into the corner, unable to escape. Jonghun swallowed hard, again.
“I...am gay,” he said, forming the words and pushing them out. His blood was rushing by too loudly for him to hear himself think, but he knew for certain that he’d made the harsh ‘g’ sound, that he’d followed that up with the ay. Knew for a fact, from the widening of everyone’s eyes, that they’d heard him.
“You?” Hongki asked, incredulous. “You pick up more girls than all of us combined!”
Jonghun looked up at him, miserably. “No I don’t, I haven’t had a date since high school.”
“Like I said!” Hongki said, gesturing wildly. He wasn’t quite sure if he was able to control his actions or not, but he was sure it was a kind of shock. “Oh my god, Jonghun, why didn’t you tell me before?” He asked, standing. He ran a hand through his hair, staring at him with wide eyes. Jonghun stared back, helplessly. He wanted to throw up his entire stomach, except he hadn’t eaten so there was nothing in it. Hongki all but ran out of the apartment, slamming the door as he left.
Jonghun rubbed the back of his neck, too miserable to look at the others. “Um, hyung?” Jaejin attempted. “If it helps at all, I kind of guessed.”
He glanced up, frowning, “how?”
“You stare at people,” Jaejin laughed.
“You talk in your sleep,” Minhwan cheerfully supplied. “I think Wonbin hyung knew too.”
Jonghun opened his mouth to say something, and could only close it again. “So, only....only Hongki didn’t know?”
Seunghyun nodded, giving him as sympathetic a look as his amused gaze would allow. “It’s okay, hyung, he’ll come around. You know he will.”
Jonghun sat back in his seat, nibbling at his bottom lip. Maybe. Maybe he would, he couldn’t get his hopes up. There was no way. No way at all.
-
Hongki came back at three, smelling of cigarette smoke and soju and carrying a bunch of playboy magazines in one hand. He threw them on Jonghun’s chest from where he’d fallen asleep on the couch. Jonghun jerked awake as Hongki plopped down on top of his feet.
“What’s this?” He asked, squinting at them and waiting for his eyes to adjust to the lamp light.
“I want to see something,” Hongki said, folding his arms over his chest. Jonghun’s eyes flicked to the magazines. He sat up, pulling his feet out form under Hongki’s heavy ass, and flipped through them, groggy and stiff from the couch.
“....these are all women,” he said, giving Hongki a searching glance.
Hongki frowned, puzzled. “So you don’t get excited by looking at them?”
“Is this some kind of a test?” He asked, throwing the magazines on the coffee table. “Because I already told you, and it’s not funny, you’re not going to change it, I’ve spent long enough trying to do that believe me-” Hongki grabbed him by the collar, his eyes as dark and rich as chocolate.
He pulled him forward, so roughly that Jonghun was afraid for a moment that he was going to hit his head against something, but it wasn’t the case. Instead of the wall, Hongki changed his grips and put his hands on the sides of Jonghun’s face almost tenderly. He moved his face in close, breath ghosting across his bottom lip and chin before their lips connected. If Jonghun had ever wondered at what a kiss with a boy would have felt like, he never would have really expected the softness, or the warmth. Maybe it was because Hongki was drunk, but he had expected it to be rough, harsh, like him. He expected something quick, not the soft tender feeling around, the testing ground, the slow deepening that crept a little closer. Jonghun’s hands fisted in Hongki’s shirt at the sides. One hand moved up to cup the back of his head as he scooted closer, tilting his head and giving him all of his love, all of the longing he’d had for the past three years.
Or more.
He stopped thinking, leaning forward until he was all but on top of Hongki. He broke the kiss only when his lungs screamed at him for needing to breathe. He panted, dropping his head on his shoulder. It was only now that he realized how badly Hongki was trembling. He wrapped his arms around his waist and buried his head in the crook of his neck, letting out a short bark of a laugh.
“Oh my god, I can’t believe I just did that to you,” Jonghun whispered. Hongki’s arms wrapped around him, and he laughed, loudly, obnoxiously.
“Yeah, because you initiated it and all,” Hongki said, and Jonghun could feel his grin against his ear. Jonghun kissed him on the ear before he pulled away with a start.
“Does this mean that you’re gay, too?”
Hongki snorted, “does it look like I like them?”
Jonghun opened his mouth, and then closed it again. “Is that a trick question?”
Hongki smirked, running his hand through Jonghun’s hair. “Nope.” He kissed him again, and this time, his soul might have really grown wings and flown away.
-
Not long after, Hongki was cast in You’re Beautiful, and the company had him shafted in F.T Triple and Seunghyun sent off to do variety shows. They barely saw each other, but Jonghun made sure to call when they were watching it, because he wouldn’t miss it for the world.
If only to laugh at his acting. Because, honestly, banana’s?
-
And then, after four years of hard work, constant back and forth, becoming fluent in Japanese, after composing multiple songs and working on a full single together, there they were, the five of them. Standing on the largest stage they’d ever had the opportunity to stand on. Budokan. This was the day, this was the second, the waves upon waves of crowds, the primadonna yellow glow, the show of fireworks and stage effects and the sounds, blasting from the speakers, of their songs, of their voices, of his guitar rifts and his embellishments. It was a moment, a magical moment, and it was only made better when Hongki sauntered over to him and placed a hand on his shoulder, staring into his eyes and singing lyrics that he’d come up with himself.
There was something special to be said about the moment. Something that told him, some special taste in his mouth. It might have been from the kiss before they got on stage, or it might have just been something else, something more. Something even more powerful than a rainy day, or maybe it was just that simple love of playing for people, playing for all of the people in the world and possibly impressing them into saying, maybe, just maybe, that this is what he’s meant to do.
And maybe, it all comes down to that finite red thread that weaved in and out of a person’s life, through their heart and soul, pulling them and connecting them all and whispering in his ear:
“This is your destiny.”