Round 11: inferiority complex
Title: inferiority complex
Team: Canon/AR
Rating: g
Fandom: IKON
Focus: gen!ot3, Hanbin-centric
Summary: it’s funny how people can condense the entirety of what they feel about a person into a word.
Author's Note: sobs would like to thank my baobei for helping me look through this and assisting with ot3 dynamics, and the many kind people in my team for helping me brainstorm and straighten out my thoughts ;A; /looks at prompt /looks at fic /crawls away.
Prompt Used: Too-G, BTL
“I thought you did great,” Jiwon comments.
Hanbin doesn’t say anything. He thinks for a moment, then he turns around in his studio swivel chair, laughing.
“I thought we were over that.”
Jiwon shrugs. “Okay.”
Hanbin stares for a moment, mouth going dry with all the things he wishes he could say. But he shouldn’t need to say anything, because he should be over it.
He is over it.
“Okay,” he imitates, turning back to his Mac and opening a program. Behind him, the sounds of Jiwon shifting around in the studio chair provides an excellent distraction. It gets so bad after a while, Hanbin has to sigh and turn back for a sideways glance.
“Can you shut the-…”
“I thought you did great, anyway,” Jiwon repeats. Hanbin stares at the doorknob to the studio for a moment (he’d happened to be looking at that when Jiwon decided to become a broken record player), trying to decipher what the other boy means.
“Okay,” he says, in a more measured tone. He feels oddly demeaned, though he knows that’s the last thing on the older boy’s mind.
“Yeah,” Jiwon nods eloquently. Then he stands, feet shuffling unnaturally loud. “Get back soon. Jinhwan keeps coming over to check if you’re sleeping and he always opens the door really loud.”
“Okay,” Hanbin decides he’s the one becoming the broken record player now. It’s both alarming and annoying. “Don’t throw your socks onto my bed. And tell Junhoe to sleep early.”
“Look who’s talking,” Jiwon chuckles once, before clearing his throat. “I’ll come back later, if you want.”
Hanbin feels a stab of irrational annoyance. “Nah, it’s fine. Go back and take a rest.”
“Okay,” the older boy walks out of the room, hands in his pockets, and he clears his throat again. “Good luck with the composing.”
Then he closes the door, and Hanbin stares into the Mac screen, motivation predictably non-existent.
*
Kim Hanbin thinks that if he were seventy years older, American, and had spent his life travelling the world in search of life’s inner meaning, he might just be able to begin to describe what he feels about Kim Jiwon.
He thinks he might just see something close to it when Jinhwan drags the two of them out to a cat café in Seoul one day, just for kicks (though Hanbin knows he’s just trying to help them all unwind after Mix and Match) and because Jiwon’s a stereotypical shit who doesn’t know any better, he brings along a ball of yarn.
It’s all harmless fun and cute messes at first, as the kittens roll the ball everywhere, leaving strings and strings of yarn behind like a trail of blood, leading to a crime scene, and they’re all laughing, until they realise just how much yarn there is in that wretched ball, until the floor is covered in this explosive mess of string with no beginning or end that even the entire army of cats in the café can’t handle. At the end of it they’re stuffing the yarn into various plastic bags, wondering how in hell all this ever managed to fit into that tiny ball.
There’s a depth to his friendship with Jiwon that Hanbin can’t put into words, can’t slowly take apart and figure out because he’s afraid it’d end up like that ball, unravelling into this giant mess all over their lives that everyone gets tangled up in, that he’ll never be able to wind up neatly into the package it came in and tuck it back into his heart, out of sight and out of mind, again.
It’s funny, he thinks, how people are able to condense everything they feel about a person into a word. Friend. Lover. Brother. Sometimes it takes a song, he knows, sometimes it takes a novel.
Hanbin thinks that even if he had an entire encyclopaedia it wouldn’t be able to summarise everything he felt about Jiwon. Maybe even a library. It just wouldn’t work.
So he takes the best and only route he knows, and declares to the world that that time bomb of wound up emotion and fear hidden somewhere in his chest doesn’t exist.
*
“You look terrible,” Hanbin mutters.
Jiwon scoffs, but he takes the cute sunflower hairband off his head and returns it to the small mountain of fan gifts piling up in the studio anyway.
“I look great,” he reclines back in the swivel chair, kicking off on Hanbin’s shin and doing lazy spins around the tiny space until he hits the coffee table with an expensive sounding clunk. Even then, he doesn’t let up. “I always look great.”
“I look greater,” Hanbin knows somewhere in that leader part of him that he’s supposed to get up and do damage control, but there’s another part of him that wouldn’t mind the idea of Jiwon getting into trouble sometime. Besides, he tells himself, he’s too tired now to do anything that needs more than a teaspoon of willpower.
Jiwon looks over, though, with a close-eyed, sleepy grin. “’Course you do.”
“Pass over some of that confidence,” Hanbin drones, mind already sliding into a sluggish incoherence from exhaustion. “Maybe I’ll get famous too.”
There’s an intermediate moment of silence, after that, which Hanbin realises post-maturely might be a result of what he’d said. He blinks awake, something uncomfortable twisting in the pit of his stomach that feels an awful lot like string unwinding, pooling in a mess of regret and anger and fear.
“You say that like you aren’t already popular shit,” Jiwon laughs, and then it’s more of a breath than a laugh and suddenly he’s exhaling, words tumbling like smoke past his lips and clouding the air between them with poisonous fragrance, and a cross of disappointment and anger flashes through the wreck of Hanbin’s heart at the scent of it.
“Maybe even as popular as you,” so he contributes, throwing up sand this time, letting it catch in the wind and blind them both, burn in the eyes of their souls so neither of them see the resentment that’s long corroded his away.
Jiwon breaks into the chorus of Big Bang’s “Lies” but peters out with feeble laughter by the second line. Hanbin follows his line of sight to a (that) copy of GQ Korea tossed carelessly on the table amidst the mess of CDs and papers and thumbdrives, and feels an odd stab of emptiness.
There’s silence after that, some form of valiant respite both of them need because it’s tiring, lying to each other so uncharacteristically much, and for once in the stupor of exhaustion and grating jealousy Hanbin realises he can’t string the words to say anything together.
So they sit in silence while Hanbin taps on the Mac keyboard and rustles lyric sheets unnecessarily loud, because he’s tired of lies and possibly more tired of the truth, so all he can do is simmer in denial.
*
Hanbin can’t remember how long it’s been since this awkward, caught-up quietness started, but he knows with a startling clarity that it’s happening and it isn’t just him because he knows the rest of them are starting to feel it too.
He sees the signs, feels the control he’d painstakingly coaxed into his hands slip every time Yunhyung shoots him a worried look over Jiwon’s shoulder during practice, eyes flicking nervously from one purposefully ignored person to another as if trying to feel his way across the bridge that’d once stood proud and strong between them, only to find it in shambles. He sees it whenever Donghyuk’s eyes stay on him longer than they should when he’s instructing them, watching and waiting and asking for confirmation, a quiet pretence with miles of cold anxiety underlying it. He feels it when Chanwoo stutters, words tumbling over one another when speaking to either of them, like there’s an acidic sort of fear that’s painfully tangible, burning at the back of his throat. Then there’s Junhoe, stuck in the room with the two of them, turning a blind eye and deaf ear to the artificial silence but stuck awake for hours at night, burning holes in the back of Hanbin’s neck with a wretched, disappointed eye like he’s letting them down. Like he already had.
But worst of all is Jinhwan. Worst of all is always Jinhwan, because it’s never his fault and somehow he’s always the one suffering the most. Jinhwan who waits up for both of them to come home at deliberately different times and singlehandedly pulls the team ahead where both of them can’t anymore and floats from one to another like he’s lost, confused, doomed to be dragged and quartered in some medieval punishment for a crime he never even committed.
Bobby and BI. Great artists, better teammates, best friends. They were supposed to be the foundation. The rock. Their bond had been the model for the rest of them, the prime example of what good team dynamics looked like.
And then Hanbin had gone and screwed it all up.
Sometimes he wonders whose fault that is. He wonders where their track of burning desire for fame and dreams and artistry had split, sent them in different directions. Sometimes he wonders if they aren’t on different tracks at all, just running at different paces. And if that’s the case he wonders who’s leading.
That’s the worst kind of thought, he realises.
*
People like you are the worst, Jiwon laughs out loud weakly to an empty practice room, when it’s just the three of them, after their scheduled practice is over and the rest of the kids have gone home. Hanbin takes a second or two to count at the back of his mind, and realises mutely that it’s been a month since they stopped talking.
A month. A month of living like this and Hanbin wonders if he can remember how things were between them before this.
He’s sitting in front of the computer, flicking through tracks and mixtapes, and Jiwon’s flat on his back on the floor, legs propped up against the mirror, while Jinhwan sits cross-legged somewhere between them, when the careless declaration comes out. Jinhwan laughs because that’s what people do in awkward situations, and everyone knows the eldest is the most sensitive of them all when it comes to things like these.
Hanbin doesn’t mean to contribute. The selfish part of him he’s long aware exists wants to be the better person, ignore Jiwon in front of Jinhwan so he can keep lying that this isn’t his problem, he’s fine, but the part of him that childishly misses the way things were seems to get the better of him every single time.
“That so,” he tries not to make it sound like he’s spitting out nails. He half-succeeds.
“Yeah, people like you are always the worst,” Jiwon repeats it like he’s afraid Hanbin hadn’t heard. “You know, the kind that don’t have the best beginnings and get all their crazy shit achievements in life on just hard work. You guys spoil the market. What are the rest of us supposed to do?”
“That’s stupid,” Hanbin laughs weakly, and Jinhwan joins in hopefully. It’s short-lived. “I’m not like that.”
“And the thing is, you guys never know when to stop,” Jiwon continues like he hasn’t heard, almost like he’s ranting, bulldozing clumsily through the wall of casual camaraderie he builds with everyone he meets to force out what’s really on his mind, for once. Hanbin doesn’t know whether to feel alarmed or angry. “You guys just keep wanting more and more and I’m like, when are you guys gonna be happy? It’s not like there’s a lot of fame to go around and there you guys are, like while you guys are getting a title you’re already thinking about how to get your next one,” his words roll off into laughter, which grates on Hanbin more than it should because who is he to talk, who the hell is he to talk to Hanbin like that when he’s the one on magazine covers with an SMTM3 title to his name and a nation of devoted fangirls, all before he debuts?
“Jiwon,” Jinhwan says it like it’s a nervous plea, and Hanbin feels a spike of annoyance.
“No, it’s fine,” He says loudly, sharply, and the studio is thrown into oppressive silence. “It’s not like what he’s said applies to me, anyway.”
That sentence hangs in the air for a split second, before Jiwon rolls over, legs dropping to the floor with a sudden thump and about to push himself up when Jinhwan straightens, eyes wide.
“Guys,” his voice is strained, the kind of tone that suggests he’s trying to be firm but frightened beyond his wits and somehow that calls for an automatic ceasefire, because neither of them have ever heard him like that before and it constricts Hanbin’s lungs with fear.
“Sorry,” Hanbin says gruffly and Jiwon follows suit in a mumble. Jinhwan’s looking from one of them to the other, an imperceptible frown creasing his eyes, making them sad and confused in ways inexplicably upsetting.
“What’s wrong with you two?”
Hanbin doesn’t dare to meet Jiwon’s eyes, so he’s reduced to staring back at the computer blankly, at the silent mauve and electric blue soundwaves of the new mixtape he’d been trying to come up with choreography for playing on the screen, as if they’re the ones holding the answers to life and inner peace and maybe even Kim Jiwon.
But they don’t. Maybe they’re in denial these problems exist, too.
*
Hanbin wonders about the legitimacy of déjà vu when Jiwon wanders back into the studio one night, when the younger boy’s in the same sweater, hunched over the same computer, trying to grit his teeth and power through the same track, and of course everything goes to shit in the same way.
“Heard what those stylist-noonas were talking about just now?” Jiwon manages to say it like he’s picking up from a fragment of a conversation they’d just had, from heaven knows when, because they haven’t been speaking properly in the past month, laughing when he’s made himself comfortable, casual and easy as anything.
Something feels like it’s itching in Hanbin at the way Jiwon’s reclining in the same chair, legs stretched out in the cramped space like he doesn’t have to be worried about how much room he takes up, because he’s earned every single inch of it and then some. Not like Hanbin. Not like Hanbin who’s failed, not just them, but himself, failed and fallen so badly he’s crumpled now, drawn in and closed off, like he’d imploded when that tiny black hole of jealousy implanted itself in his heart, not the moment he got thrown out, but the moment he realised he was the only one.
“They said Junhoe was cute. I mean, really? June? If they’d been talking about Yunhyung I would totally have gotten it, or maybe even Chanwoo, though I’m pretty sure they’d be paedophiles,” Jiwon lets out a forced, barking laugh. “Crazy, right? Would you call him cute?”
A hundred responses build up at the back of Hanbin’s throat, things he would’ve said without hesitation had it been any other moment than this, snarky replies of cuter than you, anyway or they’re probably on prescription, all struggling for a chance to reach his vocal chords and choking him with so much artifice he can’t say a word. So he shrugs, not turning around for fear of crumbling right there and then.
“Sure, Jinhwan hyung says June is cute, but he says everyone’s cute, so,” Jiwon’s getting louder, like pressure in a volcanic tube, and Hanbin feels his throat tighten further, paralysing him with expectation and fear and anger. “It’s not counted.”
“Mm,” Hanbin lets out a tense, short sound, knuckles white against the desktop, gaze determinedly nailed to the screen though he isn’t absorbing a word.
“It’s so dumb sometimes, the way everyone’s good and great and nothing’s bad to him. He’s always seeing the best in people and that’s all that matters to him, that there’s some bit of good in someone so they aren’t totally gone yet. It’s so dumb. How can you live seeing only the good in people? Is that even possible?” Jiwon hits a peak somewhere there, one that drives screws into Hanbin’s back with every syllable. “He even said you were cute. Can you believe that? You?”
If it’d been any other occasion Hanbin would’ve taken a cushion or a notebook and flung it over his shoulder, before snorting and telling Jiwon to shut up and look in a mirror, but somehow today the strength leaves him before he can summon it. Somehow today the words gnaw at him instead of glancing off, hitting him personally despite how ridiculous they are, and what would’ve made him laugh a few months ago tears him down now in ways unimaginable.
It’s Jiwon’s truce, Hanbin realises post-maturely. Some sort of sacrifice he’s tossing out under the pretence of normalcy as a last-ditch attempt to save whatever had existed between them in the only way he knows how, like he’s dredging up the tattered, black-and-white remnants of their friendship and offering grudgingly to fix it with Hanbin, but even with that knowledge he can’t.
Too much has happened, too large a crack in Hanbin’s foundation for him to even think about rebuilding bridges with anyone, especially not someone as strong as Jiwon. So he stays silent, back muscles wound with tension, waiting and hoping uselessly that Jiwon understands he isn’t ready, that it isn’t his fault, it’s all Hanbin and always has been and always will be.
Even after the violent creak of the swivel chair, the telltale footsteps walking away from him out of the room and the jarring, steel click of the door as it snaps shut, Hanbin waits.
What for, he’s long given up trying to find out.
*
“Can we talk?”
Jinhwan’s voice is clear through the dry, chilly spring air, especially here and now, when there’s no one in this part of the park at this time of the night, and it makes sense, sort of, because though he’s not the only person who’d know where to find him, as of now he’s the only person who’ll try.
(But Hanbin decides that even if those words is muffled through three doors, autotuned, played over raucous dinnertime conversation, he’ll still be able to tell it’s Jinhwan. Maybe that’s saying something about what he’s thinking of, or should be, anyway.)
If it’d been anyone else, Yunhyung, or Seungyoon, even if it’d been Jiyong or another senior coming over to try to talk some sense into him, Hanbin would’ve laughed, and said there was nothing to talk about. But this is Jinhwan, Jinhwan who’s as deep in this as either of them are, possibly more, Jinhwan who always knows and who’s always there for them no matter how big or small their problems are, Jinhwan who’s taken the bullet for them over and over again even when it’s their fault they’re in the line of fire, and Hanbin owes it to him.
So he talks.
“I wouldn’t know what to say,” he turns around from where he’s seated, cross-legged, one earbud in, to face Jinhwan, feels something broken twist inside him at the weariness in the eldest member’s eyes, barely visible in the poor illumination cast by the street lamp hovering over the two of them quietly, the backlight to some epilogue after the drama is over and the audiences have gone home.
Jinhwan stares at him hard for a while, cogs turning behind his dark eyes, and Hanbin sits, silent from exhaustion and not rebellion for once, because this has gone on long enough and Hanbin thinks that maybe, just maybe, he should start doing something about it too.
“Then say anything,” Jinhwan walks over to sit by him, elbows resting on his knees, before turning to look sideways at Hanbin in quiet expectation that’s laced with forgiving patience. “Just stop clamming up the moment any of us try to talk to you. Especially Jiwon.”
It’s strange, how the brief mention of him, of them, still manages to make Hanbin collapse inside with the slightest touch, like he still revolves around this group, around Jiwon and Jinhwan and all of them, despite everything that’s happened to sever his ties with them. Strange but necessary, he realises, because maybe that’s what forces the next few words out of his mouth.
“Hyung,” it’s humiliating, how brokenly he says that, and maybe Jinhwan thinks so too because there’s concern pooling in his eyes when he next turns to look at Hanbin. “Hyung, what do I do?”
“Why?” the older boy asks, straightening, hints of urgency underlying the gentle warmth of his voice. “Why are you even doing this to yourself? To us?”
“You think I’m doing this?” Hanbin says in a frustrated exhale, the reserve of anger and guilt and pathetic fear he’s been holding in for so long sparking and beginning to burn. “Yes, it’s my fault, it’s always my fault, I’m sorry I can’t be a better leader or a better teammate-…”
“I think both of you are being idiots, but you’re worse,” Jinhwan cuts through, and Hanbin’s taken aback for a moment. It’s not often he gets interrupted like that. “Listen to yourself. All that crap about how it’s your fault and you’re sorry but the thing is no one’s blaming you, you’re blaming yourself. Do you know how hard it’s been on the rest of the guys? You’re not the one waiting for both of you to get home, trying not to hear Chanwoo crying himself to sleep or seeing the way Donghyuk opens the door to your room like he’s still hoping to find the two of you in there.”
“How can I not be sorry, hyung?” Hanbin can barely make himself heard over the rush of blood pounding through his head, throbbing painfully through his veins like it’s trying to burst through. “I can’t even handle myself and everything I feel, how the hell am I supposed to manage a bunch of kids? I didn’t ask for this, hyung. I didn’t want to have to live up to expectations and be a great composer and a fantastic rapper, hyung, I just wanted to dance. How can I not feel sorry?”
“What is it, then?” Jinhwan changes his tone, back to the puzzled, upset voice Hanbin hates the most because he knows he’ll never be able to ignore it. “What’s been bothering you? We’re here for you, you know that, right? All of us. Just tell me what’s wrong.”
Hanbin stares past Jinhwan, breaths heaving in his lungs like he can’t get enough air to think even though he’s here, in this place of supposed refuge, stuffed to bursting with memories and regrets.
“I don’t know, hyung,” he says, slightly breathlessly. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I’m just-…” he gestures indistinctly, muscles cramping slightly at the brazen movement in the cold. “I’m just upset, hyung, I don’t even know why, it’s not his fault, it’s not anyone’s fault it’s just me, I’m stupid and whiny and I’m never going to be enough for this team, for you, for anyone.”
For him.
“Is that what you’re thinking about?” Jinhwan leans in closer, brow creasing. “Hanbin you know that’s not true right? You know you’re talented and strong and more than any of us could ever ask for, right?”
“How, hyung?” Hanbin thinks he might be going crazy, because he’s laughing at how preposterous that is, that he might ever be able to be enough for them. “Hyung if a couple of show judges can take me apart like that how am I ever going to stand up to the world? If I can’t go a single round in Mix and Match without feeling like I have to be showered with praises by the judges how am I going to release anything? How the hell am I going to guide anyone when I can’t even be better than my own teammate, hyung?”
“Is that how you see us?” there’s a softness to the contours of Jinhwan’s voice that halts Hanbin in his tracks, feels like it’s dragging him back to earth from whatever cloud he’s gotten his head stuck in this time with firm affection, and all of a sudden he feels inexplicably shamed, like a child being told off for fighting or running in the corridor. “Hanbin, look at me.”
“It’s not,” Hanbin mumbles, but he’s lying through his teeth and Jinhwan knows it, because he knows every single one of them and he knows Jiwon and Hanbin most of all.
“Hanbin if you keep looking at the rest of us like that this team is never going to go anywhere, you know that, right?” it’s embarrassing, how attuned Hanbin is to this gentle chastising, how he’s reduced to a timid, obedient child, waiting for guidance. “This team is going to start growing and we’re going to grow more than you can ever hope to control, Hanbin, and it’s okay. One day Junhoe’s going to be picked up for his dancing and Chanwoo’s going to get more acting contracts than YG can handle and if things go well Donghyuk and I might be scouted for our voices, and it’s okay,” Hanbin feels his chest tighten at those words, urgent, nervous rebellion rising at the back of his throat that no, it’s not okay, how will any of them respect me, how will any of them listen to me, but again it seems like Jinhwan’s two steps ahead of him already.
“You think the kids are going to stop listening once they go places you can’t? You think Jiwon stopped listening to you when he got that title or that interview?” Jinhwan leans in closer, and Hanbin mirrors him unconsciously, as desperate for answers as he’s averse to the truth. “You’re not just their hero, Hanbin, you’re their brother, and you’re their friend. One day they’re all going to grow up and away but it’s okay, because what you’ve done for them isn’t something they’re just going to forget. You’re important to us now and you will be forever, and if they can’t see that then it’s not you, okay?” Jinhwan’s touch does wonders and a hand on Hanbin’s shoulder is more than enough, solidifying his words in the younger boy’s mind like truth, another anchor weighing him down, buoying him.
“Don’t feel like you have to be better than us, Hanbin, even if you are,” his words are soft, but Hanbin hangs on to every syllable like it’s a lifeline. “They’ve all got the potential to be great and they’re choosing to follow you, Hanbin, because they trust you and respect you, and this isn’t going to change when they grow up.”
“Do you trust me?” the question tumbles out before Hanbin can reign it in, a childish, insecure sort of plea that comes out far more desperate than he means for it to.
Do you think he trusts me too? Even after all this?
Jinhwan lets out a breath of laughter, different from Jiwon’s exhales and Hanbin’s sighs, and Hanbin feels embarrassingly childlike as the older boy runs a hand down his cheek, settling so it cradles his face.
“Of course I do.”
And in that moment somehow Hanbin knows with a simple faith he’s telling the truth, the truth answering questions both said and silent, and something settles, soothing and warm, like a blanket, over the fraying edges of his soul, quieting the nervous murmurs floating in his head, vaporising the fog that clouds his mind.
“Sorry, hyung.”
Hanbin finds an arm settling itself in relief over his back, then, a head falling with reassuringly familiar ease onto his shoulders, and feels a stab of shame at what Jinhwan says next, with a sort of good-natured reprimand to it.
“I’m not the hyung you should be apologising to.”
*
It’s almost one in the morning by the time Hanbin barges into the studio, greeted, in that moment, by almost the same setting- Jiwon lounging dangerously in the swivel chair, picking through a new mountain of fan gifts with half-hearted interest, while he feels air-conditioning blowing at the back of his neck, making the thin layer of perspiration that’d settled there on the rushed trip up the stairs congeal uncomfortably.
It’s obvious Jiwon’s already been through Jinhwan that night, because he lets out a put upon sigh, like there’s a rehearsed speech reluctantly finding its way to his lips, and Hanbin, for once in his life, fights to beat him to it. He flings the kimchi pancake, paper wrapping and plastic bag and all, and it lands a direct hit to Jiwon’s face.
“You know what I think?” Hanbin declares, while Jiwon sits, stunned, plastic bag of pancake now in his hands. “I hate the way you talk. And your eyes are tiny. And your pants look gross. And the way you wink at girls is so 60’s it’s not even retro.
“Sometimes when you rap I feel like I’m listening to some sort of American diarrhoea. It’s dumb when fangirls scream about how cute you are because they obviously haven’t smelled your morning breath or seen the way you eat after practice. And I’ve seen you checking yourself out every time we pass a mirror after practice and it’s gross. And I’m sorry.”
He lets that hang there for a while, eyes on the floor now, shoulders heaving with his breaths.
“Sorry for being an asshole.”
It’s probably thirty seconds or so (but feels like an eternity) before he hears the studio chair creak, and looks up nervously to see Jiwon getting up, kimchi pancake sliding to the floor.
“And when you fart-…” Hanbin starts in a panic, but Jiwon’s grabbing him and pulling him into the tightest hug he’s had in a while, and every insult leaves his lungs with his breath.
“You are an asshole,” Jiwon grits out into his ear in the midst of the apparent attempt to strangle Hanbin. “And all your snapbacks are ugly.”
“Not as ugly as you,” Hanbin wheezes, half-regretting it once Jiwon tightens the hug impossibly further.
“Shit I missed you,” the relief in Jiwon’s voice is unmistakeable, and as per usual the sensation mirrors itself in Hanbin’s chest, slowly and indelicately unwinding the maelstrom knots of tension that’d tied themselves into his lungs over the past weeks.
“I sure didn’t. Did I mention you look and smell like a gorilla?”
Jiwon lets out a commiserating sigh, thumping Hanbin’s back as one would do when comforting someone particularly dense.
“Same goes for you, man, same goes.”
*
Jinhwan’s sitting at the dining table, as expected, eyes wide and hopeful the moment Hanbin steps through the door. The light behind his eyes seems to brighten when Jiwon follows, close at his heels.
The duo glance at each other, exchange short, terse nods, and stride forward purposefully. It’s testament to how accurate Jiwon is about people (or Jinhwan, at least) with regards to what he said about the eldest only seeing the good in people because he only notices something’s up when they’re about one step away, by which time, of course, it’s too late, and both of them have lifted him clean out of his chair and deposited him neatly on the ground.
The next few minutes consist of efficient, planned and deliberate smothering of said eldest with extremely manly kisses, while Jinhwan thrashes around, trapped between them, trying not to laugh too loudly while trying to shove them off in fear of waking the others. This doesn’t work, of course, because Yunhyung comes running out in alarm about half a minute into the attack at the noise, while Chanwoo peeks in wide-eyed fear through the crack in the door, both stopping in anticlimactic and slightly awkward confusion once they realise what’s going on.
Except, of course, Yunhyung wouldn’t know awkward if it hit him in the face with a force and velocity of a kimchi pancake, and lets out an unrestricted Indian yell of elation before joining in with none of the deadly accuracy Hanbin and Jiwon have been utilising so far, i.e. his kisses end up on everyone and everything. It’s terrible and sticky and nicely cherry-smelling and Hanbin honestly can’t ask for anything more.
Yunhyung stops only twice, once to lean back and loop a leg around Chanwoo to drag him forward to join the kiss fest and the second time to holler for both Donghyuk and Junhoe to come out and join them.
Once out, both second and third youngest seem to be oscillating uneasily between reluctance and judgement at the sight in the living room, but one way or another, all of them end up packed into their toilet fifteen minutes later anyway, grumpily scrubbing off saliva and cheek cells and Yunhyung’s cherry Nivea lip balm, and Hanbin kicks Jiwon in the shin when the other boy attempts to knee him in the crotch as a means to push him aside so he can get out.
“One day you’re going to be shortlisted for gangbanging on top of everything else,” Hanbin gripes as he leans over the sink, trying to wash lip balm out of his hair, and Jiwon snorts from outside, kicking the discarded shirts and blankets into one gigantic pile and audibly giving Donghyuk a meaningful look as he points in the direction of the potential laundry.
“Only if the great leader BI allows it,” he half-jokes, watching with a lazy sort of satisfaction as Donghyuk grudgingly squeezes out of the bathroom and starts gathering the pile up. “Can’t be winning any medals without your permission, now, can I.”
Hanbin snorts with a lot more nonchalance than he’d expected, suddenly aware of the watchful, hopeful gazes of six people weighing comfortably on his back, and the painful sting he’d been expecting fizzles with a reassuring impotence in his chest.
“You win the medals,” he says unconcernedly, critically inspecting his fringe in the mirror for residual lip balm, and he can almost feel it, a collective breath seems to release itself in the tiny space, pouring cement over cracked concrete and mending a gap Hanbin hadn’t even properly known was there. “I’ll lead the way.”
-fin-
Poll
Team: Canon/AR
Rating: g
Fandom: IKON
Focus: gen!ot3, Hanbin-centric
Summary: it’s funny how people can condense the entirety of what they feel about a person into a word.
Author's Note: sobs would like to thank my baobei for helping me look through this and assisting with ot3 dynamics, and the many kind people in my team for helping me brainstorm and straighten out my thoughts ;A; /looks at prompt /looks at fic /crawls away.
Prompt Used: Too-G, BTL
“I thought you did great,” Jiwon comments.
Hanbin doesn’t say anything. He thinks for a moment, then he turns around in his studio swivel chair, laughing.
“I thought we were over that.”
Jiwon shrugs. “Okay.”
Hanbin stares for a moment, mouth going dry with all the things he wishes he could say. But he shouldn’t need to say anything, because he should be over it.
He is over it.
“Okay,” he imitates, turning back to his Mac and opening a program. Behind him, the sounds of Jiwon shifting around in the studio chair provides an excellent distraction. It gets so bad after a while, Hanbin has to sigh and turn back for a sideways glance.
“Can you shut the-…”
“I thought you did great, anyway,” Jiwon repeats. Hanbin stares at the doorknob to the studio for a moment (he’d happened to be looking at that when Jiwon decided to become a broken record player), trying to decipher what the other boy means.
“Okay,” he says, in a more measured tone. He feels oddly demeaned, though he knows that’s the last thing on the older boy’s mind.
“Yeah,” Jiwon nods eloquently. Then he stands, feet shuffling unnaturally loud. “Get back soon. Jinhwan keeps coming over to check if you’re sleeping and he always opens the door really loud.”
“Okay,” Hanbin decides he’s the one becoming the broken record player now. It’s both alarming and annoying. “Don’t throw your socks onto my bed. And tell Junhoe to sleep early.”
“Look who’s talking,” Jiwon chuckles once, before clearing his throat. “I’ll come back later, if you want.”
Hanbin feels a stab of irrational annoyance. “Nah, it’s fine. Go back and take a rest.”
“Okay,” the older boy walks out of the room, hands in his pockets, and he clears his throat again. “Good luck with the composing.”
Then he closes the door, and Hanbin stares into the Mac screen, motivation predictably non-existent.
*
Kim Hanbin thinks that if he were seventy years older, American, and had spent his life travelling the world in search of life’s inner meaning, he might just be able to begin to describe what he feels about Kim Jiwon.
He thinks he might just see something close to it when Jinhwan drags the two of them out to a cat café in Seoul one day, just for kicks (though Hanbin knows he’s just trying to help them all unwind after Mix and Match) and because Jiwon’s a stereotypical shit who doesn’t know any better, he brings along a ball of yarn.
It’s all harmless fun and cute messes at first, as the kittens roll the ball everywhere, leaving strings and strings of yarn behind like a trail of blood, leading to a crime scene, and they’re all laughing, until they realise just how much yarn there is in that wretched ball, until the floor is covered in this explosive mess of string with no beginning or end that even the entire army of cats in the café can’t handle. At the end of it they’re stuffing the yarn into various plastic bags, wondering how in hell all this ever managed to fit into that tiny ball.
There’s a depth to his friendship with Jiwon that Hanbin can’t put into words, can’t slowly take apart and figure out because he’s afraid it’d end up like that ball, unravelling into this giant mess all over their lives that everyone gets tangled up in, that he’ll never be able to wind up neatly into the package it came in and tuck it back into his heart, out of sight and out of mind, again.
It’s funny, he thinks, how people are able to condense everything they feel about a person into a word. Friend. Lover. Brother. Sometimes it takes a song, he knows, sometimes it takes a novel.
Hanbin thinks that even if he had an entire encyclopaedia it wouldn’t be able to summarise everything he felt about Jiwon. Maybe even a library. It just wouldn’t work.
So he takes the best and only route he knows, and declares to the world that that time bomb of wound up emotion and fear hidden somewhere in his chest doesn’t exist.
*
“You look terrible,” Hanbin mutters.
Jiwon scoffs, but he takes the cute sunflower hairband off his head and returns it to the small mountain of fan gifts piling up in the studio anyway.
“I look great,” he reclines back in the swivel chair, kicking off on Hanbin’s shin and doing lazy spins around the tiny space until he hits the coffee table with an expensive sounding clunk. Even then, he doesn’t let up. “I always look great.”
“I look greater,” Hanbin knows somewhere in that leader part of him that he’s supposed to get up and do damage control, but there’s another part of him that wouldn’t mind the idea of Jiwon getting into trouble sometime. Besides, he tells himself, he’s too tired now to do anything that needs more than a teaspoon of willpower.
Jiwon looks over, though, with a close-eyed, sleepy grin. “’Course you do.”
“Pass over some of that confidence,” Hanbin drones, mind already sliding into a sluggish incoherence from exhaustion. “Maybe I’ll get famous too.”
There’s an intermediate moment of silence, after that, which Hanbin realises post-maturely might be a result of what he’d said. He blinks awake, something uncomfortable twisting in the pit of his stomach that feels an awful lot like string unwinding, pooling in a mess of regret and anger and fear.
“You say that like you aren’t already popular shit,” Jiwon laughs, and then it’s more of a breath than a laugh and suddenly he’s exhaling, words tumbling like smoke past his lips and clouding the air between them with poisonous fragrance, and a cross of disappointment and anger flashes through the wreck of Hanbin’s heart at the scent of it.
“Maybe even as popular as you,” so he contributes, throwing up sand this time, letting it catch in the wind and blind them both, burn in the eyes of their souls so neither of them see the resentment that’s long corroded his away.
Jiwon breaks into the chorus of Big Bang’s “Lies” but peters out with feeble laughter by the second line. Hanbin follows his line of sight to a (that) copy of GQ Korea tossed carelessly on the table amidst the mess of CDs and papers and thumbdrives, and feels an odd stab of emptiness.
There’s silence after that, some form of valiant respite both of them need because it’s tiring, lying to each other so uncharacteristically much, and for once in the stupor of exhaustion and grating jealousy Hanbin realises he can’t string the words to say anything together.
So they sit in silence while Hanbin taps on the Mac keyboard and rustles lyric sheets unnecessarily loud, because he’s tired of lies and possibly more tired of the truth, so all he can do is simmer in denial.
*
Hanbin can’t remember how long it’s been since this awkward, caught-up quietness started, but he knows with a startling clarity that it’s happening and it isn’t just him because he knows the rest of them are starting to feel it too.
He sees the signs, feels the control he’d painstakingly coaxed into his hands slip every time Yunhyung shoots him a worried look over Jiwon’s shoulder during practice, eyes flicking nervously from one purposefully ignored person to another as if trying to feel his way across the bridge that’d once stood proud and strong between them, only to find it in shambles. He sees it whenever Donghyuk’s eyes stay on him longer than they should when he’s instructing them, watching and waiting and asking for confirmation, a quiet pretence with miles of cold anxiety underlying it. He feels it when Chanwoo stutters, words tumbling over one another when speaking to either of them, like there’s an acidic sort of fear that’s painfully tangible, burning at the back of his throat. Then there’s Junhoe, stuck in the room with the two of them, turning a blind eye and deaf ear to the artificial silence but stuck awake for hours at night, burning holes in the back of Hanbin’s neck with a wretched, disappointed eye like he’s letting them down. Like he already had.
But worst of all is Jinhwan. Worst of all is always Jinhwan, because it’s never his fault and somehow he’s always the one suffering the most. Jinhwan who waits up for both of them to come home at deliberately different times and singlehandedly pulls the team ahead where both of them can’t anymore and floats from one to another like he’s lost, confused, doomed to be dragged and quartered in some medieval punishment for a crime he never even committed.
Bobby and BI. Great artists, better teammates, best friends. They were supposed to be the foundation. The rock. Their bond had been the model for the rest of them, the prime example of what good team dynamics looked like.
And then Hanbin had gone and screwed it all up.
Sometimes he wonders whose fault that is. He wonders where their track of burning desire for fame and dreams and artistry had split, sent them in different directions. Sometimes he wonders if they aren’t on different tracks at all, just running at different paces. And if that’s the case he wonders who’s leading.
That’s the worst kind of thought, he realises.
*
People like you are the worst, Jiwon laughs out loud weakly to an empty practice room, when it’s just the three of them, after their scheduled practice is over and the rest of the kids have gone home. Hanbin takes a second or two to count at the back of his mind, and realises mutely that it’s been a month since they stopped talking.
A month. A month of living like this and Hanbin wonders if he can remember how things were between them before this.
He’s sitting in front of the computer, flicking through tracks and mixtapes, and Jiwon’s flat on his back on the floor, legs propped up against the mirror, while Jinhwan sits cross-legged somewhere between them, when the careless declaration comes out. Jinhwan laughs because that’s what people do in awkward situations, and everyone knows the eldest is the most sensitive of them all when it comes to things like these.
Hanbin doesn’t mean to contribute. The selfish part of him he’s long aware exists wants to be the better person, ignore Jiwon in front of Jinhwan so he can keep lying that this isn’t his problem, he’s fine, but the part of him that childishly misses the way things were seems to get the better of him every single time.
“That so,” he tries not to make it sound like he’s spitting out nails. He half-succeeds.
“Yeah, people like you are always the worst,” Jiwon repeats it like he’s afraid Hanbin hadn’t heard. “You know, the kind that don’t have the best beginnings and get all their crazy shit achievements in life on just hard work. You guys spoil the market. What are the rest of us supposed to do?”
“That’s stupid,” Hanbin laughs weakly, and Jinhwan joins in hopefully. It’s short-lived. “I’m not like that.”
“And the thing is, you guys never know when to stop,” Jiwon continues like he hasn’t heard, almost like he’s ranting, bulldozing clumsily through the wall of casual camaraderie he builds with everyone he meets to force out what’s really on his mind, for once. Hanbin doesn’t know whether to feel alarmed or angry. “You guys just keep wanting more and more and I’m like, when are you guys gonna be happy? It’s not like there’s a lot of fame to go around and there you guys are, like while you guys are getting a title you’re already thinking about how to get your next one,” his words roll off into laughter, which grates on Hanbin more than it should because who is he to talk, who the hell is he to talk to Hanbin like that when he’s the one on magazine covers with an SMTM3 title to his name and a nation of devoted fangirls, all before he debuts?
“Jiwon,” Jinhwan says it like it’s a nervous plea, and Hanbin feels a spike of annoyance.
“No, it’s fine,” He says loudly, sharply, and the studio is thrown into oppressive silence. “It’s not like what he’s said applies to me, anyway.”
That sentence hangs in the air for a split second, before Jiwon rolls over, legs dropping to the floor with a sudden thump and about to push himself up when Jinhwan straightens, eyes wide.
“Guys,” his voice is strained, the kind of tone that suggests he’s trying to be firm but frightened beyond his wits and somehow that calls for an automatic ceasefire, because neither of them have ever heard him like that before and it constricts Hanbin’s lungs with fear.
“Sorry,” Hanbin says gruffly and Jiwon follows suit in a mumble. Jinhwan’s looking from one of them to the other, an imperceptible frown creasing his eyes, making them sad and confused in ways inexplicably upsetting.
“What’s wrong with you two?”
Hanbin doesn’t dare to meet Jiwon’s eyes, so he’s reduced to staring back at the computer blankly, at the silent mauve and electric blue soundwaves of the new mixtape he’d been trying to come up with choreography for playing on the screen, as if they’re the ones holding the answers to life and inner peace and maybe even Kim Jiwon.
But they don’t. Maybe they’re in denial these problems exist, too.
*
Hanbin wonders about the legitimacy of déjà vu when Jiwon wanders back into the studio one night, when the younger boy’s in the same sweater, hunched over the same computer, trying to grit his teeth and power through the same track, and of course everything goes to shit in the same way.
“Heard what those stylist-noonas were talking about just now?” Jiwon manages to say it like he’s picking up from a fragment of a conversation they’d just had, from heaven knows when, because they haven’t been speaking properly in the past month, laughing when he’s made himself comfortable, casual and easy as anything.
Something feels like it’s itching in Hanbin at the way Jiwon’s reclining in the same chair, legs stretched out in the cramped space like he doesn’t have to be worried about how much room he takes up, because he’s earned every single inch of it and then some. Not like Hanbin. Not like Hanbin who’s failed, not just them, but himself, failed and fallen so badly he’s crumpled now, drawn in and closed off, like he’d imploded when that tiny black hole of jealousy implanted itself in his heart, not the moment he got thrown out, but the moment he realised he was the only one.
“They said Junhoe was cute. I mean, really? June? If they’d been talking about Yunhyung I would totally have gotten it, or maybe even Chanwoo, though I’m pretty sure they’d be paedophiles,” Jiwon lets out a forced, barking laugh. “Crazy, right? Would you call him cute?”
A hundred responses build up at the back of Hanbin’s throat, things he would’ve said without hesitation had it been any other moment than this, snarky replies of cuter than you, anyway or they’re probably on prescription, all struggling for a chance to reach his vocal chords and choking him with so much artifice he can’t say a word. So he shrugs, not turning around for fear of crumbling right there and then.
“Sure, Jinhwan hyung says June is cute, but he says everyone’s cute, so,” Jiwon’s getting louder, like pressure in a volcanic tube, and Hanbin feels his throat tighten further, paralysing him with expectation and fear and anger. “It’s not counted.”
“Mm,” Hanbin lets out a tense, short sound, knuckles white against the desktop, gaze determinedly nailed to the screen though he isn’t absorbing a word.
“It’s so dumb sometimes, the way everyone’s good and great and nothing’s bad to him. He’s always seeing the best in people and that’s all that matters to him, that there’s some bit of good in someone so they aren’t totally gone yet. It’s so dumb. How can you live seeing only the good in people? Is that even possible?” Jiwon hits a peak somewhere there, one that drives screws into Hanbin’s back with every syllable. “He even said you were cute. Can you believe that? You?”
If it’d been any other occasion Hanbin would’ve taken a cushion or a notebook and flung it over his shoulder, before snorting and telling Jiwon to shut up and look in a mirror, but somehow today the strength leaves him before he can summon it. Somehow today the words gnaw at him instead of glancing off, hitting him personally despite how ridiculous they are, and what would’ve made him laugh a few months ago tears him down now in ways unimaginable.
It’s Jiwon’s truce, Hanbin realises post-maturely. Some sort of sacrifice he’s tossing out under the pretence of normalcy as a last-ditch attempt to save whatever had existed between them in the only way he knows how, like he’s dredging up the tattered, black-and-white remnants of their friendship and offering grudgingly to fix it with Hanbin, but even with that knowledge he can’t.
Too much has happened, too large a crack in Hanbin’s foundation for him to even think about rebuilding bridges with anyone, especially not someone as strong as Jiwon. So he stays silent, back muscles wound with tension, waiting and hoping uselessly that Jiwon understands he isn’t ready, that it isn’t his fault, it’s all Hanbin and always has been and always will be.
Even after the violent creak of the swivel chair, the telltale footsteps walking away from him out of the room and the jarring, steel click of the door as it snaps shut, Hanbin waits.
What for, he’s long given up trying to find out.
*
“Can we talk?”
Jinhwan’s voice is clear through the dry, chilly spring air, especially here and now, when there’s no one in this part of the park at this time of the night, and it makes sense, sort of, because though he’s not the only person who’d know where to find him, as of now he’s the only person who’ll try.
(But Hanbin decides that even if those words is muffled through three doors, autotuned, played over raucous dinnertime conversation, he’ll still be able to tell it’s Jinhwan. Maybe that’s saying something about what he’s thinking of, or should be, anyway.)
If it’d been anyone else, Yunhyung, or Seungyoon, even if it’d been Jiyong or another senior coming over to try to talk some sense into him, Hanbin would’ve laughed, and said there was nothing to talk about. But this is Jinhwan, Jinhwan who’s as deep in this as either of them are, possibly more, Jinhwan who always knows and who’s always there for them no matter how big or small their problems are, Jinhwan who’s taken the bullet for them over and over again even when it’s their fault they’re in the line of fire, and Hanbin owes it to him.
So he talks.
“I wouldn’t know what to say,” he turns around from where he’s seated, cross-legged, one earbud in, to face Jinhwan, feels something broken twist inside him at the weariness in the eldest member’s eyes, barely visible in the poor illumination cast by the street lamp hovering over the two of them quietly, the backlight to some epilogue after the drama is over and the audiences have gone home.
Jinhwan stares at him hard for a while, cogs turning behind his dark eyes, and Hanbin sits, silent from exhaustion and not rebellion for once, because this has gone on long enough and Hanbin thinks that maybe, just maybe, he should start doing something about it too.
“Then say anything,” Jinhwan walks over to sit by him, elbows resting on his knees, before turning to look sideways at Hanbin in quiet expectation that’s laced with forgiving patience. “Just stop clamming up the moment any of us try to talk to you. Especially Jiwon.”
It’s strange, how the brief mention of him, of them, still manages to make Hanbin collapse inside with the slightest touch, like he still revolves around this group, around Jiwon and Jinhwan and all of them, despite everything that’s happened to sever his ties with them. Strange but necessary, he realises, because maybe that’s what forces the next few words out of his mouth.
“Hyung,” it’s humiliating, how brokenly he says that, and maybe Jinhwan thinks so too because there’s concern pooling in his eyes when he next turns to look at Hanbin. “Hyung, what do I do?”
“Why?” the older boy asks, straightening, hints of urgency underlying the gentle warmth of his voice. “Why are you even doing this to yourself? To us?”
“You think I’m doing this?” Hanbin says in a frustrated exhale, the reserve of anger and guilt and pathetic fear he’s been holding in for so long sparking and beginning to burn. “Yes, it’s my fault, it’s always my fault, I’m sorry I can’t be a better leader or a better teammate-…”
“I think both of you are being idiots, but you’re worse,” Jinhwan cuts through, and Hanbin’s taken aback for a moment. It’s not often he gets interrupted like that. “Listen to yourself. All that crap about how it’s your fault and you’re sorry but the thing is no one’s blaming you, you’re blaming yourself. Do you know how hard it’s been on the rest of the guys? You’re not the one waiting for both of you to get home, trying not to hear Chanwoo crying himself to sleep or seeing the way Donghyuk opens the door to your room like he’s still hoping to find the two of you in there.”
“How can I not be sorry, hyung?” Hanbin can barely make himself heard over the rush of blood pounding through his head, throbbing painfully through his veins like it’s trying to burst through. “I can’t even handle myself and everything I feel, how the hell am I supposed to manage a bunch of kids? I didn’t ask for this, hyung. I didn’t want to have to live up to expectations and be a great composer and a fantastic rapper, hyung, I just wanted to dance. How can I not feel sorry?”
“What is it, then?” Jinhwan changes his tone, back to the puzzled, upset voice Hanbin hates the most because he knows he’ll never be able to ignore it. “What’s been bothering you? We’re here for you, you know that, right? All of us. Just tell me what’s wrong.”
Hanbin stares past Jinhwan, breaths heaving in his lungs like he can’t get enough air to think even though he’s here, in this place of supposed refuge, stuffed to bursting with memories and regrets.
“I don’t know, hyung,” he says, slightly breathlessly. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I’m just-…” he gestures indistinctly, muscles cramping slightly at the brazen movement in the cold. “I’m just upset, hyung, I don’t even know why, it’s not his fault, it’s not anyone’s fault it’s just me, I’m stupid and whiny and I’m never going to be enough for this team, for you, for anyone.”
For him.
“Is that what you’re thinking about?” Jinhwan leans in closer, brow creasing. “Hanbin you know that’s not true right? You know you’re talented and strong and more than any of us could ever ask for, right?”
“How, hyung?” Hanbin thinks he might be going crazy, because he’s laughing at how preposterous that is, that he might ever be able to be enough for them. “Hyung if a couple of show judges can take me apart like that how am I ever going to stand up to the world? If I can’t go a single round in Mix and Match without feeling like I have to be showered with praises by the judges how am I going to release anything? How the hell am I going to guide anyone when I can’t even be better than my own teammate, hyung?”
“Is that how you see us?” there’s a softness to the contours of Jinhwan’s voice that halts Hanbin in his tracks, feels like it’s dragging him back to earth from whatever cloud he’s gotten his head stuck in this time with firm affection, and all of a sudden he feels inexplicably shamed, like a child being told off for fighting or running in the corridor. “Hanbin, look at me.”
“It’s not,” Hanbin mumbles, but he’s lying through his teeth and Jinhwan knows it, because he knows every single one of them and he knows Jiwon and Hanbin most of all.
“Hanbin if you keep looking at the rest of us like that this team is never going to go anywhere, you know that, right?” it’s embarrassing, how attuned Hanbin is to this gentle chastising, how he’s reduced to a timid, obedient child, waiting for guidance. “This team is going to start growing and we’re going to grow more than you can ever hope to control, Hanbin, and it’s okay. One day Junhoe’s going to be picked up for his dancing and Chanwoo’s going to get more acting contracts than YG can handle and if things go well Donghyuk and I might be scouted for our voices, and it’s okay,” Hanbin feels his chest tighten at those words, urgent, nervous rebellion rising at the back of his throat that no, it’s not okay, how will any of them respect me, how will any of them listen to me, but again it seems like Jinhwan’s two steps ahead of him already.
“You think the kids are going to stop listening once they go places you can’t? You think Jiwon stopped listening to you when he got that title or that interview?” Jinhwan leans in closer, and Hanbin mirrors him unconsciously, as desperate for answers as he’s averse to the truth. “You’re not just their hero, Hanbin, you’re their brother, and you’re their friend. One day they’re all going to grow up and away but it’s okay, because what you’ve done for them isn’t something they’re just going to forget. You’re important to us now and you will be forever, and if they can’t see that then it’s not you, okay?” Jinhwan’s touch does wonders and a hand on Hanbin’s shoulder is more than enough, solidifying his words in the younger boy’s mind like truth, another anchor weighing him down, buoying him.
“Don’t feel like you have to be better than us, Hanbin, even if you are,” his words are soft, but Hanbin hangs on to every syllable like it’s a lifeline. “They’ve all got the potential to be great and they’re choosing to follow you, Hanbin, because they trust you and respect you, and this isn’t going to change when they grow up.”
“Do you trust me?” the question tumbles out before Hanbin can reign it in, a childish, insecure sort of plea that comes out far more desperate than he means for it to.
Do you think he trusts me too? Even after all this?
Jinhwan lets out a breath of laughter, different from Jiwon’s exhales and Hanbin’s sighs, and Hanbin feels embarrassingly childlike as the older boy runs a hand down his cheek, settling so it cradles his face.
“Of course I do.”
And in that moment somehow Hanbin knows with a simple faith he’s telling the truth, the truth answering questions both said and silent, and something settles, soothing and warm, like a blanket, over the fraying edges of his soul, quieting the nervous murmurs floating in his head, vaporising the fog that clouds his mind.
“Sorry, hyung.”
Hanbin finds an arm settling itself in relief over his back, then, a head falling with reassuringly familiar ease onto his shoulders, and feels a stab of shame at what Jinhwan says next, with a sort of good-natured reprimand to it.
“I’m not the hyung you should be apologising to.”
*
It’s almost one in the morning by the time Hanbin barges into the studio, greeted, in that moment, by almost the same setting- Jiwon lounging dangerously in the swivel chair, picking through a new mountain of fan gifts with half-hearted interest, while he feels air-conditioning blowing at the back of his neck, making the thin layer of perspiration that’d settled there on the rushed trip up the stairs congeal uncomfortably.
It’s obvious Jiwon’s already been through Jinhwan that night, because he lets out a put upon sigh, like there’s a rehearsed speech reluctantly finding its way to his lips, and Hanbin, for once in his life, fights to beat him to it. He flings the kimchi pancake, paper wrapping and plastic bag and all, and it lands a direct hit to Jiwon’s face.
“You know what I think?” Hanbin declares, while Jiwon sits, stunned, plastic bag of pancake now in his hands. “I hate the way you talk. And your eyes are tiny. And your pants look gross. And the way you wink at girls is so 60’s it’s not even retro.
“Sometimes when you rap I feel like I’m listening to some sort of American diarrhoea. It’s dumb when fangirls scream about how cute you are because they obviously haven’t smelled your morning breath or seen the way you eat after practice. And I’ve seen you checking yourself out every time we pass a mirror after practice and it’s gross. And I’m sorry.”
He lets that hang there for a while, eyes on the floor now, shoulders heaving with his breaths.
“Sorry for being an asshole.”
It’s probably thirty seconds or so (but feels like an eternity) before he hears the studio chair creak, and looks up nervously to see Jiwon getting up, kimchi pancake sliding to the floor.
“And when you fart-…” Hanbin starts in a panic, but Jiwon’s grabbing him and pulling him into the tightest hug he’s had in a while, and every insult leaves his lungs with his breath.
“You are an asshole,” Jiwon grits out into his ear in the midst of the apparent attempt to strangle Hanbin. “And all your snapbacks are ugly.”
“Not as ugly as you,” Hanbin wheezes, half-regretting it once Jiwon tightens the hug impossibly further.
“Shit I missed you,” the relief in Jiwon’s voice is unmistakeable, and as per usual the sensation mirrors itself in Hanbin’s chest, slowly and indelicately unwinding the maelstrom knots of tension that’d tied themselves into his lungs over the past weeks.
“I sure didn’t. Did I mention you look and smell like a gorilla?”
Jiwon lets out a commiserating sigh, thumping Hanbin’s back as one would do when comforting someone particularly dense.
“Same goes for you, man, same goes.”
*
Jinhwan’s sitting at the dining table, as expected, eyes wide and hopeful the moment Hanbin steps through the door. The light behind his eyes seems to brighten when Jiwon follows, close at his heels.
The duo glance at each other, exchange short, terse nods, and stride forward purposefully. It’s testament to how accurate Jiwon is about people (or Jinhwan, at least) with regards to what he said about the eldest only seeing the good in people because he only notices something’s up when they’re about one step away, by which time, of course, it’s too late, and both of them have lifted him clean out of his chair and deposited him neatly on the ground.
The next few minutes consist of efficient, planned and deliberate smothering of said eldest with extremely manly kisses, while Jinhwan thrashes around, trapped between them, trying not to laugh too loudly while trying to shove them off in fear of waking the others. This doesn’t work, of course, because Yunhyung comes running out in alarm about half a minute into the attack at the noise, while Chanwoo peeks in wide-eyed fear through the crack in the door, both stopping in anticlimactic and slightly awkward confusion once they realise what’s going on.
Except, of course, Yunhyung wouldn’t know awkward if it hit him in the face with a force and velocity of a kimchi pancake, and lets out an unrestricted Indian yell of elation before joining in with none of the deadly accuracy Hanbin and Jiwon have been utilising so far, i.e. his kisses end up on everyone and everything. It’s terrible and sticky and nicely cherry-smelling and Hanbin honestly can’t ask for anything more.
Yunhyung stops only twice, once to lean back and loop a leg around Chanwoo to drag him forward to join the kiss fest and the second time to holler for both Donghyuk and Junhoe to come out and join them.
Once out, both second and third youngest seem to be oscillating uneasily between reluctance and judgement at the sight in the living room, but one way or another, all of them end up packed into their toilet fifteen minutes later anyway, grumpily scrubbing off saliva and cheek cells and Yunhyung’s cherry Nivea lip balm, and Hanbin kicks Jiwon in the shin when the other boy attempts to knee him in the crotch as a means to push him aside so he can get out.
“One day you’re going to be shortlisted for gangbanging on top of everything else,” Hanbin gripes as he leans over the sink, trying to wash lip balm out of his hair, and Jiwon snorts from outside, kicking the discarded shirts and blankets into one gigantic pile and audibly giving Donghyuk a meaningful look as he points in the direction of the potential laundry.
“Only if the great leader BI allows it,” he half-jokes, watching with a lazy sort of satisfaction as Donghyuk grudgingly squeezes out of the bathroom and starts gathering the pile up. “Can’t be winning any medals without your permission, now, can I.”
Hanbin snorts with a lot more nonchalance than he’d expected, suddenly aware of the watchful, hopeful gazes of six people weighing comfortably on his back, and the painful sting he’d been expecting fizzles with a reassuring impotence in his chest.
“You win the medals,” he says unconcernedly, critically inspecting his fringe in the mirror for residual lip balm, and he can almost feel it, a collective breath seems to release itself in the tiny space, pouring cement over cracked concrete and mending a gap Hanbin hadn’t even properly known was there. “I’ll lead the way.”
-fin-
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