when am i ever??? [ fic ]
this is me trying to get my mojo back ;~;. i've lost inspiration to write for about a month (except facebook fic lmao) and i'm trying to slowly wean it back so this is probably not that great but i wanted to get it out in time for raenism's birthday (which i'm still about half an hour late for, gdi). anyway, i don't ship yb/teddy either so idk lmao oh well have it here you go. for raenism (happy bday ♥), envoler, and jandi who all wanted some yb/teddy, sobs, i'm sorry if this isn't what you wanted :(. mostly unedited.
serious (but it aint srs so don't take it srs)
yb/teddy | pg-13, 3925 words, canon
the show before and after big show 2010.
Youngbae is still in the middle of makeup when Teddy shows up backstage.
"'Eyyyy," he hears, somewhere between closing his eyes for shadow and looking up at the ceiling for liner, and he feels Jiyong shift out of the seat beside him to greet their hyung. The sound of hands slapping against each other and noisy greetings in English that are as foreign to them as Teddy's area of Brooklyn greet his ears, and he breaks into a smile when Seunghyun asks if Teddy remembered to bring them beer this time.
"What, you nervous, T.O.P?" Teddy says, and when Seunghyun mutters something about taking the edge off and just joking, Youngbae sees Teddy's reflection in the mirror chuff Seunghyun good-naturedly on the back. "Naw, man, I'd be nervous too if I was coming back from a year's break and basically everything was riding on this concert."
"Oh, lay off him," Jiyong rolls his eyes through the mess of chuckling and the giveaway smile on his own face.
"Youngbae-yah," his makeup noona chides, and Youngbae realizes he's supposed to be keeping his mouth still for lip tint and has accidentally grinned again. He straightens his face and lets her wipe off the excess product on the corner of his mouth.
"Sorry."
"Stop making Top-hyung sweat through his suit and go bother your favorite dongsaeng," he hears Jiyong say.
"You're all my favorite," Teddy corrects, but then three steps and his hands are on the back of Youngbae's swivel-chair. He's dressed in his usual hoodie (checkered today), cap (HYPE), and sagging pants, his reflection filling Youngbae's mirror underneath the hot lights from the Hollywood-style bulbs. "Sup," he declares, patting Youngbae's arm. "You look pretty."
Youngbae blinks. "Pretty?" Teddy is never lacking with the amount of compliments he doles out to him, but 'pretty' is one he's never heard before.
"All that makeup," Teddy says, waving his index finger in a circular motion around his face for emphasis. Makeup-noona motions for Youngbae to close his eyes again before Teddy adds, "Kinda scary close-up, actually," and then a minute later, "I used to just go onstage barefaced."
"Well, you shouldn't have," Youngbae says. He means it as a general stage suggestion and doesn't realize he's made a low cut at Teddy's looks until he cracks one eye open and sees the surprise on his face.
"Well, well," he says, drawing the sound out and pretending to look affronted, "look who's been spending too much time with Jiyong," and then Youngbae can't help the laugh that bubbles from his lips that draws out another exasperated, "Aiiish, Youngbae," from the noona.
"I didn't mean it that way," he says.
"No, no, too late to take it back now," Teddy says. A cameraman, no doubt for behind-the-scenes dvd footage, has drifted onto their exchange, and Teddy leans down closer to Youngbae and drapes an arm carelessly over his shoulder. "You girls watch out for this one," he says, pointing into the camera and then shaking his finger at Youngbae's face. "You think he's a nice guy? He just called me ugly."
Youngbae nudges his finger away from his nose. "You're being melodramatic."
"Boy, after all I've done for you," Teddy exclaims, and then a faceful of his frown passes from Youngbae line of vision, currently trapped by Teddy's almost-headlock with how close he's holding him steady, to where Teddy asks the makeup-noona if he's lying, tell the camera please if Teddy or Youngbae is lying. His fingers on the front of Youngbae's shirt tighten and Youngbae can feel the laugh whooshing out of Teddy's chest, breath tickling his ears.
"I was joking," Youngbae explains, then switches eye contact to the black camera lens. "I think Teddy-hyung is handsome."
Teddy releases him with a "y'hear that" into the camera before something in his pocket buzzes and he takes out his phone, concentrating on the LG screen; the cameraman moves onto Daesung eating his bento dinner with Minji on the couches instead.
"Yo, Top," Teddy calls, "Kush says he's got beer!"
Against protests from Jiyong that he would rather Seunghyun not be drunk onstage and make a complete fool of himself, to Seunghyun rebutting that he wouldn't be drunk off a beer or two - at most, he'd only be cheerfully tipsy, Teddy brushes a hand on Youngbae's shoulder and squeezes lightly once before walking away.
"Are you okay?"
Youngbae looks up from adjusting his fingerless riding gloves. "I'm fine," he says.
"Your hands are shaking." Teddy raises a brow and removes Youngbae's fumbling fingers before doing up his glove straps himself. "You sure?"
"Yes," Youngbae answers automatically, but the smile he means to do doesn't quite make it there and ends up as a second-long twitch of the mouth instead.
Teddy stares at him. "I believe that," he says dryly, the same second the stage director calls out, "Ten minutes!"
"I'm..." Youngbae's not really sure what to say. It should all be comfortable to him, this backstage joint rush right before lights-camera-action that he's been through so many times before - coordi-noonas fixing last-minute costume details and dusting bits of anti-shine powder on everything that moves, Jiyong going over set changes with the assistant director, Chaerin and Dara-noona taping each other's earpiece cords onto the backs of their necks and Master Hwang massaging Daesung's biceps, Jinu mopping his forehead in the corner - but something in the air feels different, like everything has evolved ahead of them and Youngbae's Rip Van Winkle trying to catch up to currency.
He shrugs, fiddling with the edge of his costume and trying to look nonchalant when he regurgitates Teddy's words back at him. "We've been gone a long time. And, we... everything depends on this."
"Aish," Teddy sighs. "Don't listen to that, that wasn't for you. Just Top-goon."
"You give terrible advice."
"Man, I'm a producer, not a shrink." Teddy grins and grabs Youngbae's hands, jiggling them so his arms now shake in rhythm with the butterflies pounding in his stomach. "It's gonna be fine. You'll be great. 'Cause you're always great." He swings Youngbae's left arm out to the side and back again, repeating the awkward motion in the other arm. "I'm never worried about Taeyang."
"Thanks, hyung, I'm kind of..." Youngbae trails off at his Teddy-controlled arm motions. "What are you doing?"
"Getting you to lighten up, dumbass," Teddy says, and doesn't look at all embarrassed when he starts jostling Youngbae back and forth in some sort of homemade swing-dance step that makes Youngbae feel ridiculous, but it melts into a snort when Teddy starts humming to go along with their nonsensical choreography.
"Feel better yet?" The older man says in singsong melody.
Not really, but he's distracted, and he's laughing, and it's nice that Teddy always tries his lousy best no matter how small his crisis.
Somebody yells something from behind him about getting ready to take their positions backstage.
Teddy stops moving. "Go get 'em," he says, and pulls Youngbae in by his elbows for a hug. Despite himself, Youngbae resents how the top of his head almost neatly fits underneath Teddy's chin; years of developing tricks to make himself look taller (but this is only so his makeup doesn't smear, he tells himself) has him automatically tilting his head up and off to the side so it doesn't happen - and he's not exactly sure what occurs next.
Teddy says something he doesn't hear, so he turns his head, mouth open to ask Teddy to repeat it - and then Teddy must've done the exact same thing at the same time because the next thing Youngbae knows, his lips are tangled with Teddy's and they're kissing and he's frozen in place, his arms still around Teddy's middle.
He meets Teddy's eyes for one startled moment before he wrenches himself away, mouth burning white-hot and Teddy's breath on his flushed cheeks.
There's a burst of laughter from the opposite corner of the room, and he whips his head around, only to see Kush and Seunghyun chortling at Seungri attempting to taste (and choking on) the Heineken Kush brought. And then he attempts to say something that will right the situation and not scare the both of them into never talking to each other for the rest of their YG lives, but nothing comes out except a rather strangled "um".
"Youngbae-yah." Jiyong is halfway out the room with Daesung and half the backstage crew dressed in black. He waves at him. "It's time, we have to go. Top-hyung, Seungri! Stop messing around!"
"You should go," Teddy prompts; Youngbae blinks and has no idea how in God's name the other man looks so infuriatingly undisturbed, a tiny smile even crooking the left side of his mouth - his mouth that had just been on Youngbae's - and how was he so calm? It wasn't like this sort of thing happened every day (unless, Youngbae suddenly thinks, it did) - but then Teddy is pushing him Jiyong's way and he doesn't have time to dwell on it anymore.
Seungri, smelling like fermented buckwheat, appears behind him to throw him a cheery, "hwaiting!" his way, and a moment later their manager is jostling them down the hall towards the stage, the background noise punctuated by Jiyong's yells at Seungri about the beer.
And then Youngbae is awash in the black of the stage risers, the booms of the speakers, the screams of the crowd, all of it hitting him at lightspeed and filling his mind and body until everything else is pushed away.
It's at the third costume change, all of them harried and sweaty and too focused to do much except lift their arms and turn around, that Jiyong catches him, a light frown on his face.
"Hey," he says, a bit breathless as he nudges Youngbae on the arm. "Are you feeling all right?"
"Fine." It's almost a little sad how automatic his answer is, four-letter answer always at the tip of his tongue without pausing to think about it. Youngbae accepts the bottle of water a noona gives him. "Why, am I doing something wrong?"
Jiyong shakes his head and uncaps his own water. "It's not that." He drinks deeply from the bottle before wiping at his lips and shrugging. "Just... something in your face. You've been really quiet. I don't know."
Youngbae can't think about anything except the moves and the hook to the next song they're performing, but when something is bothering their leader, Jiyong usually doesn't just let these things go without an explanation. "Probably just the pressure," Youngbae supplies. "We have something to prove with this show."
His answer seems to satisfy Jiyong. "We're doing good," he reassures him with another pat to the arm, and Youngbae returns the smile he offers.
The rest of Big Show 2010 goes by without a hitch. It's enough to make Youngbae temporarily forget about anything other than celebrating, at least while he is running on pure adrenalin after the lights go down, sprinting right behind Daesung and in front of Jihye and hearing the whoops from Jiyong and Seungri's throats echo around the corridors as they rush past the line of supporters backstage and straight into a confetti-and-silly-string storm.
He sees Teddy a couple of times in the midst of the crowd when everybody is taking pictures, bouncing off the walls, popping bottles of champagne and screaming notes of congratulations at each other, but he doesn't meet his eyes, and there are too many people between them, too many bodies to push through. It might be a good thing since Youngbae doesn't exactly know what he'd say. He's too exhausted, too happy to deal with it at the moment.
He lets Dara pull him into another selca instead.
When he finally makes it into the dressing room to change and scrub the stage makeup off his face, Teddy isn't there anymore.
He lets the aftershock of the concert, the ignorant happiness that fills him to his toes, buoy him for another three days, just long enough for him to wake up Thursday morning and remember that he's supposed to go into the studio to work on a few final tracks on his album that morning. He contemplates calling in to cancel, but winces at how impolite that would sound, and in the end, he showers, scribbles a note telling the other four where he'll be, and hitches a ride with 2NE1's manager to the YG Building.
He pauses with his hand on the door to the studio. His mind runs through everything he's prepared to say in situations like this - but he has, in actuality, no idea what to say in situations like this because as far as Youngbae's love life goes, this is a monumental step and he's not even sure if it was intentional. Or if he's okay with it.
He's considered calling Jiyong and asking him for help, but Youngbae's pretty sure he would rather know as little has he can of Jiyong's love endeavors. Hard, since they share a wall and Jiyong's not always the quietest person in the world, but accidentally hearing things and actually talking to him about something like - something not having to do with the perfect girl, or the other female celebrities on stage he might like, but their almost-thirty male producer - makes him drop his phone back into his pocket and tentatively crack open the studio door instead.
Teddy is sitting at the computer with Choice 37 to his left at the mixing board, and both of them have just burst into laughter about something. He doesn't even look up as Youngbae walks in and sets his backpack down on the couch behind them.
They seem to be in the middle of some English joke, so Youngbae sits quietly down and pretends to look normal even though his hands are shaking a little bit; he wonders if Teddy is feeling just as awkward and if perhaps he should just leave. Maybe he got the date of his album work wrong, and he's not supposed to be here at all.
But then Teddy swivels around on his office chair and holds out a hand. "YB! You ready to work?"
Youngbae pauses uncertainly before taking it in usual greeting. "Um." He meets Teddy's eyes for a second, and there's nothing there out of the ordinary - just leftover fatigue, mirth from whatever he and Choice were just laughing about, and that look Teddy calls "in the zone" when he's working. "Yes."
"Hey," Choice comments, "I heard the concert went really well."
"Thanks, hyung," Youngbae returns politely. "We did our best."
"Yea, man," Choice nods. "I'm sad I missed it. Anything really great happen?"
Youngbae freezes. His eyes flicker over to Teddy, but there's nothing on his face indicating that he told Choice anything at all.
"You aight in there?" Teddy asks, knocking on the bill of Youngbae's cap when he doesn't speak. He answers Choice for him. "It was all good, you know. Hey, YB, let's work on your last track. We wrote a new coda for you."
And then Youngbae is handed a sheet of paper scrawled with lyrics and notes, and is walking towards the recording booth as Teddy and Choice lapse back into English about lunch or something, and for the second time in a week feels thoroughly confused out of his mind.
Watching Chaerin dance is a good distraction.
Youngbae doesn't exactly know what about the studio has driven him out and into the confines of the practice rooms, but the fact that Teddy is acting like nothing happened isn't sitting right with him. So until one of them gets their heads on straight, Youngbae has temporarily planted himself on a window ledge in the biggest dance room until he deems it appropriate to go home.
He'd been sitting there brooding, not even able to remember his own footwork, when Chaerin had come in and asked if she could practice for a little while before popping in a CD of what turned out to be Aaliyah circa 2000. And for the past hour and a half, she's just been doing drills, over and over, face set and concentrated on the mirrors in front of her and only stopping to shake out her limbs every so often before starting over. The similarity to Jiyong is a little frightening.
Youngbae is pretty sure neither Jiyong nor Chaerin would let anything like his current issue at hand bother them silently for almost a week. He grimaces just as Chaerin turns off the stereo, cutting Aaliyah off mid-croon, and plops down beside Youngbae with her water bottle, breathing hard.
"Any suggestions, oppa?" She asks, and Youngbae shrugs.
"You were good."
Chaerin blinks at him. "But you were staring at me like I was doing something wrong the whole time. Are you okay?"
"Fine," Youngbae returns, a bit more bite in his tone than he'd intended, and it's like he's not even trying anymore. Chaerin frowns.
"Are you sure, oppa? Because you... don't look fine."
Youngbae sighs, wondering exactly what is on his face or behavior that seems to be registering with everybody else as 'not fine' except him. And Teddy, apparently. "I'm okay, just a little tired." The lie sounds even more transparent echoing back to him in the empty dance studio, but he's not about to say any different.
Chaerin looks like she wants to say more, but instead she shrugs and wipes her face down with the pink towel slung over her shoulder. "Okay. Hey, you going to see Teddy-oppa to record some more?"
Youngbae coughs. "No, probably not." He pauses for a second, coughs, and abruptly adds, "We kissed."
"What?" Chaerin almost drops her gym bag. "You what?"
Not exactly sure why what just came out of his mouth came out of his mouth, Youngbae fixes his glance somewhere between the toe of his shoes and the air vent right below it. "I think it was an accident."
Chaerin's nostrils flare. Youngbae suddenly remembers her rather vocal crush on Teddy she's been harboring for the past however-many years, and decides that maybe telling her was not the best idea. "Sorry," he mutters, and she shakes her head, the motion jerky and irregular.
"No, it's - well. Have you - are you guys, um, dating?"
"No. Of course not." His hands dig into the pockets of his fleece hoodie until he musters up enough gusto to say something else. "I haven't talked to him about what happened."
"Okay." It takes her another two minutes or so to speak, the only noise in between Youngbae's shoes scuffing repeatedly on the polished floor and the clicking of the heat turning off. She finally sucks in a breath and clutches his forearm, her hands cold to the touch. "Does this mean you're... Teddy-oppa is... gay?"
Youngbae's eyes drift back to his shoes again. "It was an accident," he mumbles to the floor.
Chaerin is silent for a little longer. "I think you need to talk to him, oppa," she finally says. "If he's the one making you like this, then you need to talk."
Judging by the somewhat somber look on her face, Youngbae wonders if he should have just sucked it up and talked to Jiyong instead of his female counterpart. But then again, he probably would have gotten the exact same answer, albeit with a little more whooping and running to Seunghyun's and Daesung's rooms to rat him out and celebrate with whatever alcohol they could find in the pantry.
And God must have a very cruel sense of humor, because Youngbae has no other ideas as to how Teddy would be in the studio that following Saturday morning exactly the same time Youngbae passes by, especially when the older man has never been known to wake up before noon on weekends.
He hasn't even registered the door opening before Teddy is stepping out and coming towards him, a notebook in his hands.
Youngbae blinks. "What are you doing here?"
"Working." Teddy gives him a strange look. "What're you doing here?"
"I was...." Youngbae gestures vaguely towards the studio, looks at Teddy, and pivots on his heel. "Leaving."
"Okay then.... Hey," Teddy's voice follows him down the hallway. "You okay, man?"
"Fine." Youngbae inwardly berates himself for sounding like a wind-up toy, then makes himself turn back around and stop pretending. "We." He stops, clears his throat, starts again, eyes flitting past Teddy and concentrating on the Exit sign behind him instead. "Kissed."
With the way Teddy's been acting the past week, he expects him to play it down with a 'what are you talking about' or 'I think you have me confused with another Teddy Park' or something equally as ridiculous. What Youngbae doesn't expect is for a fleeting look of embarrassment to cross the older man's face before he looks away and attempts to laugh. "Oh," he says, and Youngbae swears he rocks back a little on his feet. "Yea."
Yea? Youngbae feels his face fall. "Is that... all?"
"Well, I don't know," Teddy answers almost immediately; his hand comes up to rub at the back of his neck, and he laughs again, though it doesn't quite reach his eyes. "I mean, what d'you want me to say, YB? It was an accident. I figured you wouldn't talk about it so I was giving you space."
"I need to talk about it," Youngbae says firmly. He retraces his steps until they're facing each other again, and then a moment later he tacks on a belated, "sorry."
"It's okay." Teddy smiles reassuringly, albeit a little awkward as he shifts his weight around on his feet. "So, um."
"Yes. So." No wonder Youngbae's never had a relationship before if this is how he deals with things. Again, he finds his stare fixating on the floor and his voice at barely above a mutter. "I guess - I just, I don't want things to change. But acting like nothing happened isn't a great way to deal with it either."
He sees Teddy's shadow nodding. "Okay."
"I'm, I don't, I'm not sure where to go, either. From here. But I don't. I don't not like what happened. At Big Show." He can't bring himself to say the K word a third time, but he hopes Teddy understands enough of his stumbling around to know what he means.
"Okay, look." Youngbae feels the other man's hands on his shoulders, steadying him - and he thinks to himself that he likes this too, likes that Teddy's touch is comfortable - that this, at least, hasn't changed. Teddy coughs. "We'll take it slow, all right? Shit, I don't know what to do either."
"You don't?"
Teddy shrugs, on the whole unconcerned. "Nah, but we'll figure it together. We're smart. We make albums, we can do this."
Youngbae smiles; the tension seems to lift off his shoulders and blow away down the corridor. "So, we're okay?"
Teddy nods, a certain gesture of bravado behind it but Youngbae likes that they can do this together. "We okay."
When he slings an arm back around Youngbae's shoulder and starts leading them back towards the studio room, talking about how he wants Youngbae to give his final okay on one of the tracks off his album he's about to send to YG, Youngbae is sure that something is definitely different. Changed, just like the atmosphere backstage at Big Show, and he can't put his finger on what this is, either, but this time, with Teddy's chest pressed to his back and listening to him chuckle at his own jokes, the difference is not unwelcome at all.
serious (but it aint srs so don't take it srs)
yb/teddy | pg-13, 3925 words, canon
the show before and after big show 2010.
Youngbae is still in the middle of makeup when Teddy shows up backstage.
"'Eyyyy," he hears, somewhere between closing his eyes for shadow and looking up at the ceiling for liner, and he feels Jiyong shift out of the seat beside him to greet their hyung. The sound of hands slapping against each other and noisy greetings in English that are as foreign to them as Teddy's area of Brooklyn greet his ears, and he breaks into a smile when Seunghyun asks if Teddy remembered to bring them beer this time.
"What, you nervous, T.O.P?" Teddy says, and when Seunghyun mutters something about taking the edge off and just joking, Youngbae sees Teddy's reflection in the mirror chuff Seunghyun good-naturedly on the back. "Naw, man, I'd be nervous too if I was coming back from a year's break and basically everything was riding on this concert."
"Oh, lay off him," Jiyong rolls his eyes through the mess of chuckling and the giveaway smile on his own face.
"Youngbae-yah," his makeup noona chides, and Youngbae realizes he's supposed to be keeping his mouth still for lip tint and has accidentally grinned again. He straightens his face and lets her wipe off the excess product on the corner of his mouth.
"Sorry."
"Stop making Top-hyung sweat through his suit and go bother your favorite dongsaeng," he hears Jiyong say.
"You're all my favorite," Teddy corrects, but then three steps and his hands are on the back of Youngbae's swivel-chair. He's dressed in his usual hoodie (checkered today), cap (HYPE), and sagging pants, his reflection filling Youngbae's mirror underneath the hot lights from the Hollywood-style bulbs. "Sup," he declares, patting Youngbae's arm. "You look pretty."
Youngbae blinks. "Pretty?" Teddy is never lacking with the amount of compliments he doles out to him, but 'pretty' is one he's never heard before.
"All that makeup," Teddy says, waving his index finger in a circular motion around his face for emphasis. Makeup-noona motions for Youngbae to close his eyes again before Teddy adds, "Kinda scary close-up, actually," and then a minute later, "I used to just go onstage barefaced."
"Well, you shouldn't have," Youngbae says. He means it as a general stage suggestion and doesn't realize he's made a low cut at Teddy's looks until he cracks one eye open and sees the surprise on his face.
"Well, well," he says, drawing the sound out and pretending to look affronted, "look who's been spending too much time with Jiyong," and then Youngbae can't help the laugh that bubbles from his lips that draws out another exasperated, "Aiiish, Youngbae," from the noona.
"I didn't mean it that way," he says.
"No, no, too late to take it back now," Teddy says. A cameraman, no doubt for behind-the-scenes dvd footage, has drifted onto their exchange, and Teddy leans down closer to Youngbae and drapes an arm carelessly over his shoulder. "You girls watch out for this one," he says, pointing into the camera and then shaking his finger at Youngbae's face. "You think he's a nice guy? He just called me ugly."
Youngbae nudges his finger away from his nose. "You're being melodramatic."
"Boy, after all I've done for you," Teddy exclaims, and then a faceful of his frown passes from Youngbae line of vision, currently trapped by Teddy's almost-headlock with how close he's holding him steady, to where Teddy asks the makeup-noona if he's lying, tell the camera please if Teddy or Youngbae is lying. His fingers on the front of Youngbae's shirt tighten and Youngbae can feel the laugh whooshing out of Teddy's chest, breath tickling his ears.
"I was joking," Youngbae explains, then switches eye contact to the black camera lens. "I think Teddy-hyung is handsome."
Teddy releases him with a "y'hear that" into the camera before something in his pocket buzzes and he takes out his phone, concentrating on the LG screen; the cameraman moves onto Daesung eating his bento dinner with Minji on the couches instead.
"Yo, Top," Teddy calls, "Kush says he's got beer!"
Against protests from Jiyong that he would rather Seunghyun not be drunk onstage and make a complete fool of himself, to Seunghyun rebutting that he wouldn't be drunk off a beer or two - at most, he'd only be cheerfully tipsy, Teddy brushes a hand on Youngbae's shoulder and squeezes lightly once before walking away.
"Are you okay?"
Youngbae looks up from adjusting his fingerless riding gloves. "I'm fine," he says.
"Your hands are shaking." Teddy raises a brow and removes Youngbae's fumbling fingers before doing up his glove straps himself. "You sure?"
"Yes," Youngbae answers automatically, but the smile he means to do doesn't quite make it there and ends up as a second-long twitch of the mouth instead.
Teddy stares at him. "I believe that," he says dryly, the same second the stage director calls out, "Ten minutes!"
"I'm..." Youngbae's not really sure what to say. It should all be comfortable to him, this backstage joint rush right before lights-camera-action that he's been through so many times before - coordi-noonas fixing last-minute costume details and dusting bits of anti-shine powder on everything that moves, Jiyong going over set changes with the assistant director, Chaerin and Dara-noona taping each other's earpiece cords onto the backs of their necks and Master Hwang massaging Daesung's biceps, Jinu mopping his forehead in the corner - but something in the air feels different, like everything has evolved ahead of them and Youngbae's Rip Van Winkle trying to catch up to currency.
He shrugs, fiddling with the edge of his costume and trying to look nonchalant when he regurgitates Teddy's words back at him. "We've been gone a long time. And, we... everything depends on this."
"Aish," Teddy sighs. "Don't listen to that, that wasn't for you. Just Top-goon."
"You give terrible advice."
"Man, I'm a producer, not a shrink." Teddy grins and grabs Youngbae's hands, jiggling them so his arms now shake in rhythm with the butterflies pounding in his stomach. "It's gonna be fine. You'll be great. 'Cause you're always great." He swings Youngbae's left arm out to the side and back again, repeating the awkward motion in the other arm. "I'm never worried about Taeyang."
"Thanks, hyung, I'm kind of..." Youngbae trails off at his Teddy-controlled arm motions. "What are you doing?"
"Getting you to lighten up, dumbass," Teddy says, and doesn't look at all embarrassed when he starts jostling Youngbae back and forth in some sort of homemade swing-dance step that makes Youngbae feel ridiculous, but it melts into a snort when Teddy starts humming to go along with their nonsensical choreography.
"Feel better yet?" The older man says in singsong melody.
Not really, but he's distracted, and he's laughing, and it's nice that Teddy always tries his lousy best no matter how small his crisis.
Somebody yells something from behind him about getting ready to take their positions backstage.
Teddy stops moving. "Go get 'em," he says, and pulls Youngbae in by his elbows for a hug. Despite himself, Youngbae resents how the top of his head almost neatly fits underneath Teddy's chin; years of developing tricks to make himself look taller (but this is only so his makeup doesn't smear, he tells himself) has him automatically tilting his head up and off to the side so it doesn't happen - and he's not exactly sure what occurs next.
Teddy says something he doesn't hear, so he turns his head, mouth open to ask Teddy to repeat it - and then Teddy must've done the exact same thing at the same time because the next thing Youngbae knows, his lips are tangled with Teddy's and they're kissing and he's frozen in place, his arms still around Teddy's middle.
He meets Teddy's eyes for one startled moment before he wrenches himself away, mouth burning white-hot and Teddy's breath on his flushed cheeks.
There's a burst of laughter from the opposite corner of the room, and he whips his head around, only to see Kush and Seunghyun chortling at Seungri attempting to taste (and choking on) the Heineken Kush brought. And then he attempts to say something that will right the situation and not scare the both of them into never talking to each other for the rest of their YG lives, but nothing comes out except a rather strangled "um".
"Youngbae-yah." Jiyong is halfway out the room with Daesung and half the backstage crew dressed in black. He waves at him. "It's time, we have to go. Top-hyung, Seungri! Stop messing around!"
"You should go," Teddy prompts; Youngbae blinks and has no idea how in God's name the other man looks so infuriatingly undisturbed, a tiny smile even crooking the left side of his mouth - his mouth that had just been on Youngbae's - and how was he so calm? It wasn't like this sort of thing happened every day (unless, Youngbae suddenly thinks, it did) - but then Teddy is pushing him Jiyong's way and he doesn't have time to dwell on it anymore.
Seungri, smelling like fermented buckwheat, appears behind him to throw him a cheery, "hwaiting!" his way, and a moment later their manager is jostling them down the hall towards the stage, the background noise punctuated by Jiyong's yells at Seungri about the beer.
And then Youngbae is awash in the black of the stage risers, the booms of the speakers, the screams of the crowd, all of it hitting him at lightspeed and filling his mind and body until everything else is pushed away.
It's at the third costume change, all of them harried and sweaty and too focused to do much except lift their arms and turn around, that Jiyong catches him, a light frown on his face.
"Hey," he says, a bit breathless as he nudges Youngbae on the arm. "Are you feeling all right?"
"Fine." It's almost a little sad how automatic his answer is, four-letter answer always at the tip of his tongue without pausing to think about it. Youngbae accepts the bottle of water a noona gives him. "Why, am I doing something wrong?"
Jiyong shakes his head and uncaps his own water. "It's not that." He drinks deeply from the bottle before wiping at his lips and shrugging. "Just... something in your face. You've been really quiet. I don't know."
Youngbae can't think about anything except the moves and the hook to the next song they're performing, but when something is bothering their leader, Jiyong usually doesn't just let these things go without an explanation. "Probably just the pressure," Youngbae supplies. "We have something to prove with this show."
His answer seems to satisfy Jiyong. "We're doing good," he reassures him with another pat to the arm, and Youngbae returns the smile he offers.
The rest of Big Show 2010 goes by without a hitch. It's enough to make Youngbae temporarily forget about anything other than celebrating, at least while he is running on pure adrenalin after the lights go down, sprinting right behind Daesung and in front of Jihye and hearing the whoops from Jiyong and Seungri's throats echo around the corridors as they rush past the line of supporters backstage and straight into a confetti-and-silly-string storm.
He sees Teddy a couple of times in the midst of the crowd when everybody is taking pictures, bouncing off the walls, popping bottles of champagne and screaming notes of congratulations at each other, but he doesn't meet his eyes, and there are too many people between them, too many bodies to push through. It might be a good thing since Youngbae doesn't exactly know what he'd say. He's too exhausted, too happy to deal with it at the moment.
He lets Dara pull him into another selca instead.
When he finally makes it into the dressing room to change and scrub the stage makeup off his face, Teddy isn't there anymore.
He lets the aftershock of the concert, the ignorant happiness that fills him to his toes, buoy him for another three days, just long enough for him to wake up Thursday morning and remember that he's supposed to go into the studio to work on a few final tracks on his album that morning. He contemplates calling in to cancel, but winces at how impolite that would sound, and in the end, he showers, scribbles a note telling the other four where he'll be, and hitches a ride with 2NE1's manager to the YG Building.
He pauses with his hand on the door to the studio. His mind runs through everything he's prepared to say in situations like this - but he has, in actuality, no idea what to say in situations like this because as far as Youngbae's love life goes, this is a monumental step and he's not even sure if it was intentional. Or if he's okay with it.
He's considered calling Jiyong and asking him for help, but Youngbae's pretty sure he would rather know as little has he can of Jiyong's love endeavors. Hard, since they share a wall and Jiyong's not always the quietest person in the world, but accidentally hearing things and actually talking to him about something like - something not having to do with the perfect girl, or the other female celebrities on stage he might like, but their almost-thirty male producer - makes him drop his phone back into his pocket and tentatively crack open the studio door instead.
Teddy is sitting at the computer with Choice 37 to his left at the mixing board, and both of them have just burst into laughter about something. He doesn't even look up as Youngbae walks in and sets his backpack down on the couch behind them.
They seem to be in the middle of some English joke, so Youngbae sits quietly down and pretends to look normal even though his hands are shaking a little bit; he wonders if Teddy is feeling just as awkward and if perhaps he should just leave. Maybe he got the date of his album work wrong, and he's not supposed to be here at all.
But then Teddy swivels around on his office chair and holds out a hand. "YB! You ready to work?"
Youngbae pauses uncertainly before taking it in usual greeting. "Um." He meets Teddy's eyes for a second, and there's nothing there out of the ordinary - just leftover fatigue, mirth from whatever he and Choice were just laughing about, and that look Teddy calls "in the zone" when he's working. "Yes."
"Hey," Choice comments, "I heard the concert went really well."
"Thanks, hyung," Youngbae returns politely. "We did our best."
"Yea, man," Choice nods. "I'm sad I missed it. Anything really great happen?"
Youngbae freezes. His eyes flicker over to Teddy, but there's nothing on his face indicating that he told Choice anything at all.
"You aight in there?" Teddy asks, knocking on the bill of Youngbae's cap when he doesn't speak. He answers Choice for him. "It was all good, you know. Hey, YB, let's work on your last track. We wrote a new coda for you."
And then Youngbae is handed a sheet of paper scrawled with lyrics and notes, and is walking towards the recording booth as Teddy and Choice lapse back into English about lunch or something, and for the second time in a week feels thoroughly confused out of his mind.
Watching Chaerin dance is a good distraction.
Youngbae doesn't exactly know what about the studio has driven him out and into the confines of the practice rooms, but the fact that Teddy is acting like nothing happened isn't sitting right with him. So until one of them gets their heads on straight, Youngbae has temporarily planted himself on a window ledge in the biggest dance room until he deems it appropriate to go home.
He'd been sitting there brooding, not even able to remember his own footwork, when Chaerin had come in and asked if she could practice for a little while before popping in a CD of what turned out to be Aaliyah circa 2000. And for the past hour and a half, she's just been doing drills, over and over, face set and concentrated on the mirrors in front of her and only stopping to shake out her limbs every so often before starting over. The similarity to Jiyong is a little frightening.
Youngbae is pretty sure neither Jiyong nor Chaerin would let anything like his current issue at hand bother them silently for almost a week. He grimaces just as Chaerin turns off the stereo, cutting Aaliyah off mid-croon, and plops down beside Youngbae with her water bottle, breathing hard.
"Any suggestions, oppa?" She asks, and Youngbae shrugs.
"You were good."
Chaerin blinks at him. "But you were staring at me like I was doing something wrong the whole time. Are you okay?"
"Fine," Youngbae returns, a bit more bite in his tone than he'd intended, and it's like he's not even trying anymore. Chaerin frowns.
"Are you sure, oppa? Because you... don't look fine."
Youngbae sighs, wondering exactly what is on his face or behavior that seems to be registering with everybody else as 'not fine' except him. And Teddy, apparently. "I'm okay, just a little tired." The lie sounds even more transparent echoing back to him in the empty dance studio, but he's not about to say any different.
Chaerin looks like she wants to say more, but instead she shrugs and wipes her face down with the pink towel slung over her shoulder. "Okay. Hey, you going to see Teddy-oppa to record some more?"
Youngbae coughs. "No, probably not." He pauses for a second, coughs, and abruptly adds, "We kissed."
"What?" Chaerin almost drops her gym bag. "You what?"
Not exactly sure why what just came out of his mouth came out of his mouth, Youngbae fixes his glance somewhere between the toe of his shoes and the air vent right below it. "I think it was an accident."
Chaerin's nostrils flare. Youngbae suddenly remembers her rather vocal crush on Teddy she's been harboring for the past however-many years, and decides that maybe telling her was not the best idea. "Sorry," he mutters, and she shakes her head, the motion jerky and irregular.
"No, it's - well. Have you - are you guys, um, dating?"
"No. Of course not." His hands dig into the pockets of his fleece hoodie until he musters up enough gusto to say something else. "I haven't talked to him about what happened."
"Okay." It takes her another two minutes or so to speak, the only noise in between Youngbae's shoes scuffing repeatedly on the polished floor and the clicking of the heat turning off. She finally sucks in a breath and clutches his forearm, her hands cold to the touch. "Does this mean you're... Teddy-oppa is... gay?"
Youngbae's eyes drift back to his shoes again. "It was an accident," he mumbles to the floor.
Chaerin is silent for a little longer. "I think you need to talk to him, oppa," she finally says. "If he's the one making you like this, then you need to talk."
Judging by the somewhat somber look on her face, Youngbae wonders if he should have just sucked it up and talked to Jiyong instead of his female counterpart. But then again, he probably would have gotten the exact same answer, albeit with a little more whooping and running to Seunghyun's and Daesung's rooms to rat him out and celebrate with whatever alcohol they could find in the pantry.
And God must have a very cruel sense of humor, because Youngbae has no other ideas as to how Teddy would be in the studio that following Saturday morning exactly the same time Youngbae passes by, especially when the older man has never been known to wake up before noon on weekends.
He hasn't even registered the door opening before Teddy is stepping out and coming towards him, a notebook in his hands.
Youngbae blinks. "What are you doing here?"
"Working." Teddy gives him a strange look. "What're you doing here?"
"I was...." Youngbae gestures vaguely towards the studio, looks at Teddy, and pivots on his heel. "Leaving."
"Okay then.... Hey," Teddy's voice follows him down the hallway. "You okay, man?"
"Fine." Youngbae inwardly berates himself for sounding like a wind-up toy, then makes himself turn back around and stop pretending. "We." He stops, clears his throat, starts again, eyes flitting past Teddy and concentrating on the Exit sign behind him instead. "Kissed."
With the way Teddy's been acting the past week, he expects him to play it down with a 'what are you talking about' or 'I think you have me confused with another Teddy Park' or something equally as ridiculous. What Youngbae doesn't expect is for a fleeting look of embarrassment to cross the older man's face before he looks away and attempts to laugh. "Oh," he says, and Youngbae swears he rocks back a little on his feet. "Yea."
Yea? Youngbae feels his face fall. "Is that... all?"
"Well, I don't know," Teddy answers almost immediately; his hand comes up to rub at the back of his neck, and he laughs again, though it doesn't quite reach his eyes. "I mean, what d'you want me to say, YB? It was an accident. I figured you wouldn't talk about it so I was giving you space."
"I need to talk about it," Youngbae says firmly. He retraces his steps until they're facing each other again, and then a moment later he tacks on a belated, "sorry."
"It's okay." Teddy smiles reassuringly, albeit a little awkward as he shifts his weight around on his feet. "So, um."
"Yes. So." No wonder Youngbae's never had a relationship before if this is how he deals with things. Again, he finds his stare fixating on the floor and his voice at barely above a mutter. "I guess - I just, I don't want things to change. But acting like nothing happened isn't a great way to deal with it either."
He sees Teddy's shadow nodding. "Okay."
"I'm, I don't, I'm not sure where to go, either. From here. But I don't. I don't not like what happened. At Big Show." He can't bring himself to say the K word a third time, but he hopes Teddy understands enough of his stumbling around to know what he means.
"Okay, look." Youngbae feels the other man's hands on his shoulders, steadying him - and he thinks to himself that he likes this too, likes that Teddy's touch is comfortable - that this, at least, hasn't changed. Teddy coughs. "We'll take it slow, all right? Shit, I don't know what to do either."
"You don't?"
Teddy shrugs, on the whole unconcerned. "Nah, but we'll figure it together. We're smart. We make albums, we can do this."
Youngbae smiles; the tension seems to lift off his shoulders and blow away down the corridor. "So, we're okay?"
Teddy nods, a certain gesture of bravado behind it but Youngbae likes that they can do this together. "We okay."
When he slings an arm back around Youngbae's shoulder and starts leading them back towards the studio room, talking about how he wants Youngbae to give his final okay on one of the tracks off his album he's about to send to YG, Youngbae is sure that something is definitely different. Changed, just like the atmosphere backstage at Big Show, and he can't put his finger on what this is, either, but this time, with Teddy's chest pressed to his back and listening to him chuckle at his own jokes, the difference is not unwelcome at all.