[fic] we are two hard stones with sharp edges, come between us and make us soft
title: we are two hard stones with sharp edges, come between us and make us soft
fandom: [kpop] Infinite
characters/pairing: 2wooyeol (OT7)
word count: ~1900
summary: Leader makes everyone watch "Without You" and Sungyeol throws a temper tantrum
a/n: Still feeling the effects of my precious babies looking so tired. In the Billboard interview, Sunggyu makes a comment that they have to choose between "cleaning or sleeping" --- basically suggesting flat out admitting that they barely have time to sleep. And they ALL look it. But Dongwoo most of all. My 2woogyu piece was fluffy and cuddly. This is Yeollie's perspective: there's mostly angst and frustration. Because 2woogyu is my schmoopy ship and 2wooyeol is... something else entirely.
GUISE. WHAT ARE MY LIFE CHOICES?
[Prince Sungyeol should always be holding court]
Sungyeol was tired. Bone-tired. Possibly what you would call dog-tired (though he had never understood the expression really). And the last thing that he wanted to do was pile into the living room with the others.
Even though it was the first time in weeks they’d all been home at the same time and relatively awake.
Yet Sunggyu was insisting they all sit for a minute together and watch the new Infinite-H music video. Together. To support their rapper line. He got very blue in the face lecturing them on support and sticking together and Sungyeol maybe had tuned him out halfway through and he thinks maybe Woohyun noticed and was upset, but he just couldn’t care about anything but his empty bed waiting for him.
Even though several of them had already seen previous cuts of the video. And he was sure that they’d all see it so many more times and would be forced to watch it in interviews and in meetings and it wasn’t that he wasn’t proud of them, or hated the song, he was just tired.
So he almost missed it. The familiar beat to “Without You” started and everyone was piled together and there was Myungsoo’s head on his shoulder like always and Woohyun’s leg pressed up against his like always and he was so tired and he knew he’d see the video a million more times…But he caught a shot of Dongwoo’s face out of the corner of his eye and started paying attention.
He knew Hoya was exhausted. They were all exhausted. Sungyeol sees them all every day and he knew they were tired - they were all always tired. He had seen that Dongwoo was losing weight. But this?
Okay. Sungyeol shook his head. Maybe he wouldn’t have noticed if it wasn’t for Woohyun getting more and more worried and frantic each day. He couldn’t sleep when Dongwoo and Hoya were out working and promoting. There was always a sink full of dishes and piles of food in the fridge in the morning that he jealously tried to force Dongwoo to eat.
But if Sungyeol was honest with himself, it wasn’t even that. He probably wouldn’t have noticed Woohyun’s ever-shifting mood if it weren’t for the fact that his kisses had become rougher, harsher - his fingers left bruises and his teeth seemed sharper. And he was so hungry. They usually found very little time for each other. And what little time they did - even with Dongwoo away and working - was usually secret and hushed.
Not that the other boys didn’t know. Not that Sunggyu didn’t look like the long-suffering father of miscreants whenever they ducked back from a secret rendezvous. Not that he didn’t catch Hoya winking slyly at Woohyun sometimes, or nudging Dongwoo knowingly. Not that the two youngest didn’t seem to be burning with questions that stayed silent whenever they were left alone.
They all knew. Everyone just had the decency to stay quiet.
Only lately Woohyun had been so hungry. It was the only word for it. He stayed longer in Sungyeol’s bed, not bothering to leave before the others woke up. He had started making it a habit to barge into Sungyeol’s showers, leaving him breathless, bruised, sated, but a little confused. And once with a bloody lip. His constant worrying over Dongwoo was left in little scratches all over Sungyeol’s body. In the slight headache that was now constant from Woohyun pulling his hair as he bent Sungyeol over, naked, slippery, and wet, in the shower, taking him hard and fast and moaning into the taller boy’s shoulder blades.
Afterwards, Sungyeol never felt like it helped Woohyun at all - just made them both feel even more wrung out, used-up.
On Sungyeol’s body were the discreet markings of a worn-out, worried, anxious lover. But while watching the new video, he realized that Dongwoo’s slight body was bearing so much more. He was thinner - so much thinner. Sungyeol could see it now, looking at the screen and then back at the young man curled up into Woohyun’s chest like a small child.
He started to get fidgety. Myungsoo moved away with an angry glance. But he just couldn’t sit still. Not now.
Hoya was a model of balance. He knew how much he could give and what to give.
Alright, sometimes even his heart seemed too exposed; but he knew himself and no one worried too much about him. Except maybe Sungjong. But really, if Sungjong was on your team - Sungyeol was convinced you didn’t need anyone else.
But Dongwoo didn’t know how to hold himself back. Didn’t know how to stop giving. He was ridiculously like Woohyun in that way. It was exhausting. Usually when they got like this, Sungyeol just waited for Sunggyu to scold them into obedience. If their hyung told them to stop being ridiculous, they usually at least slowed down and had the decency to look sheepish. Sungyeol could wash his hands of them and walk away. After a while, they usually noticed and he’d come back - teasing them harshly.
Sungyeol didn’t tease gently; they three were just a matter of extremes.
The second the video was over, Sungyeol leapt up and stormed off to his room, slamming the door as he went.
He could hear them in the living room handing out praises, Hoya and Dongwoo softly accepting congratulations with that special humility Sungyeol usually found so endearing. But he couldn’t have stayed.
And damnit. He could throw a temper tantrum if he wanted to.
A few minutes later, Dongwoo peeked his head in bashfully, as though afraid that he would be kicked out. “Prince Yeollie? Do I have permission to enter?”
Sungyeol’s heart clenched.
“Depends,” and his voice was harsh and cold. He didn’t mean it to be. He had never heard it do that exactly. He cleared his throat a little, “Are you alone?”
Woohyun shoved the door open all the way and barged in, “Nope!”
He was happy. Smiling. Of course he was, the brat. Weeks of taking his anger out on Sungyeol and now that they were all together he was happy as a clam and Sungyeol was left to be the angry, unruly one.
Yes. He was angry. More than he’d ever been. More than that time he was awake later than anyone else and he saw Sunggyu come home quietly and practically collapse from exhaustion in the doorway, Sungyeol catching him and leading him to bed. More than that time Myungsoo had gotten so frustrated with fans that he had tore away from him in that hotel and cried in their room. More than when he brushed Myungsoo’s hair with his hand and strands fell right away to the ground. More than the day Sunggyu quietly commented that Woohyun hadn’t eaten more than a few mouthfuls of food in over 48 hours and they had a screaming fight at the gym, wrestling each other to the ground until Dongwoo finally found them and intervened.
Because this time it was Dongwoo. And there was Woohyun just smiling like an idiot while Dongwoo leaned up against the wall, his slight frame more narrow than ever. The bags under his eyes seemed to have grown larger - as if that were possible. Sungyeol felt like he was looking at a completely different person.
He wanted to crawl out of his skin and scream.
Possibly he had been pacing the room under their gaze for a few moments without noticing it, because when he looked back up at them, the door was closed and Woohyun’s smile was replaced with a look of slight confusion.
Sungyeol stopped moving finally and held out his hands, as if in supplication. He didn’t know what to say. He could say anything to these two, anything really at all, but he shied away from words. He hid behind jokes and double-talk, Woohyun always understood him no matter what... and Dongwoo always knew he was trying hard and took what he gave as though his words were stars Sungyeol had plucked out of the sky just for him.
“It… it shouldn’t be this way.”
His voice cracked and that surprised him.
He was on the ground in a heap of tears and his own limbs ungainly followed, lying haphazardly around him as if they were separate from himself.
The thought vaguely crossed his mind that really, he should be somewhere wrapped around Dongwoo, instead of in a heap on the floor wallowing in his own misery. But the thought of feeling the changes in Dongwoo’s body that he had been trying to ignore, that he had let go by unnoticed, that he had been avoiding, just made the tears stream down more easily.
“You IDIOT!” Sungyeol finally screamed out from the floor, surprising both of the older boys - who were standing quite still, unsure how to respond. “Don’t you ever EAT?! Why are you working so hard? FOR WHAT? For Infinite?! That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard.”
He looked up at them. Angry.
“Normal people don’t live like this.”
Dongwoo smiled and crouched down beside him, “But you’re a Prince. How can we live like normal people with royalty among us?”
Sungyeol almost recoiled. Dongwoo usually didn’t tease like this. The few times Sungyeol had cried, Dongwoo had been in his arms in moments, cooing and comforting. It was a testament to how tired they all were, that even Dongwoo was joking instead of comforting.
Woohyun dragged them both up to standing and then pushed them into Dongwoo’s bed. “So we aren’t normal,” he said as he went to turn the light off. “We’re still human. And we still need sleep.”
Sungyeol started to protest, but Dongwoo pulled him down to lie next to him, “In the morning Prince.”
Woohyun crawled into the bed on the other side of Dongwoo, kissing Sungyeol’s shoulder as he crawled over them in the dark, “Hyung has Myungsoo bunking with him tonight. So let’s just try to rest. You can call the tabloids and yell at them in the morning.”
Dongwoo murmured, “Hyung will probably dial the number for you.”
Sungyeol smiled bitterly at the thought of Sunggyu voicing a complaint about their lives. Only in some alternate universe could that be true, he tightened his arms around Dongwoo, or so he had always believed.
Woohyun snuggled into Dongwoo’s chest and took Sungyeol’s hand from where it rested there, pressing a soft kiss onto it, and hugging it to him as he pressed closer to Dongwoo. Dongwoo reached up and placed his hand over the other two’s gently as Sungyeol planted a kiss on the back of Dongwoo’s neck, right there where it always made him shiver delightfully, and whispered, “I’m sorry.”
Dongwoo murmured to him, but he was already half asleep, tucked between Woohyun and Sungyeol. So small, so much smaller than normal, but still filling up the space between them as he always had - with his gentleness, smoothing out their rough edges.
As he drifted off, Sungyeol heard Woohyun humming to them.
He had once said, when they were on the road somewhere and Sunggyu had allowed them to be together and undisturbed, and they had all been sated and a little sweaty and beaming, that he wanted his voice to always be the last they heard before they fell asleep. Sungyeol had rolled his eyes at him and teased him about it several times since.
But that night, with Dongwoo between them so still and small and so much weaker than they had ever seen him, with the memory of Woohyun’s nails biting into his thighs that morning in the shower, with the slight headache that always came after he cried, Sungyeol had never been so grateful for Woohyun’s devotion to sentimentality.