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Infinite disbands on a Thursday.
It seems like some kind of sick joke, to have them debut and disband on the same day of the week. It takes Woohyun exactly 7 days to leave. He doesn’t say goodbye to any of them, but it’s okay. They understand.
But that doesn’t mean Sunggyu isn’t a little miffed, that it doesn't knock the wind right out of him. For the past decade they’d confided in each other for every little thing, and now it felt like he was missing a limb or a best friend.
Sunggyu finds a note on the roof of the dormitory building, stuck under a rock right where Sunggyu used to sit for hours. He remembers when Woohyun used to sit next to him, sometimes. They would talk until their throats ached, or they wouldn’t talk, just sit, maybe with their shoulders brushing, fingers loosely intertwined on those rare nights they were feeling daring. But that was a long time ago, when they were Infinite, when they felt invincible from the harsh winds of reality, since they had one another to use as impenetrable shields. They were so foolish back then, so unbearably stupid, clinging onto the idea of forever like it could save them from the inevitable.
Sunggyu looks down at the note written in black ink. He feels sort of cheated to have nothing left of Woohyun but a “goodbye, hyung” etched onto a slightly crumpled piece of sheet music, but he understands.
But that doesn’t mean he doesn’t angrily tear the note to shreds, only to try and frantically piece it back together moments later. It’s too far gone though, so he lets the last pieces of Woohyun slip between the cracks of his trembling fingers and get carried away by the wind. He thinks the wind represents reality, tearing Woohyun away from him like it should have done years ago.
As he watches the shards of paper drift down and down from his spot on the roof, he thinks of the past increasing and the future receding and how a decade isn’t really that much time at all, in the grand scheme of things.
-
When Sunggyu met Woohyun for the first time, he hated him. He hated that he was so good at everything, without even having to try. He was better than Sunggyu in every way and that obviously meant that he had to hate every fiber of his being.
Because Sunggyu needed this, and Woohyun didn’t. This was his only shot. Woohyun could have anything he wanted, he could make it into JYP or even SM, but he had to choose this shitty little company that even accepted people like Sunggyu. Sunggyu with his wide nose and wide thighs, had to basically beg to even be accepted as a trainee.
And Woohyun, of course, hated Sunggyu back. And that’s just how they worked. They were enemies, clawing and fighting with words that hit deep and left a bad aftertaste in both of their mouths. But they were both too stubborn to give it up, even after they were thrown into this dorm together with a heap of other gangly boys and deemed Infinite.
Everyone loved Woohyun. Myungsoo clung onto him like a lifeline, Dongwoo and Hoya laughed at all of his jokes, Sungyeol would go to him for advice about his love life, and Sungjong would tease him like he couldn’t quite tease the rest of his hyungs. And they were all great and happy and it made Sunggyu sick. Why couldn’t they see what Sunggyu saw in Woohyun - an egotistical and spoiled jackass wrapped in way-too-cute packaging?
But the thing was, the more Sunggyu observed Woohyun interacting with the other members, the more he started to reluctantly realize that maybe Woohyun wasn’t what he thought he was. Well at least the jackass part. He was still egotistical and spoiled. This revelation didn’t stop Sunggyu from his verbal jibes at the younger, though. It seemed to just come natural to Sunggyu to attack Woohyun at every turn.
“You were off tempo in that last verse, Woohyun-ssi. You need to pay more attention and stop just belting out the lyrics like a show-off.” Sunggyu swears he didn’t even mean to let the scathing words escape his mouth, but now they were hanging in the air between them, and Woohyun was glaring at him.
“Hyung. I’ve tried being civil with you. Hell, I’ve even tried to be friends, why do you always have to attack me? We are a team now, we need to work together.” This was true. Woohyun had been trying. But the more he tried, the more Sunggyu pulled away. He didn't know if it was stupid pride or stupid fear that kept him from letting Woohyun in, but based on the way his fingers were trembling it was more of the latter.
Sunggyu sighed and looked away from Woohyun’s piercing eyes that always seemed to see right through him, past his tough facade and right to his core. His very insecure, anxiety ridden core.
“You just…”
“I just what?” Woohyun very bravely put a hand on his shoulder, and normally, Sunggyu would’ve made an attempt at breaking said hand, but today he let the warmth from it soak in through his thin t-shirt and keep him from breaking into tiny, jagged pieces. “You’ve never even given me a chance, Sunggyu.”
“I…” Sunggyu took a deep breathe and told himself to Grow the hell up, bastard. You can’t stay a scared kid forever. “I think you’re right.”
“I’m… right?”
“I really haven’t given you a chance. I started hating you from the moment I heard you sing, since I thought it meant the end for me.” Sunggyu finally looked the other in the eyes and smiled slightly, painfully. “I started packing my bags when I saw your face.” Woohyun was stunned, the hand still resting on Sunggyu’s shoulder freezing up. And then he laughed. And somehow, before he even has time to stop it, he was laughing too.
"You know, I never really hated you."
Sunggyu is confused, "How? I was always so... hostile towards you. How could you not hate me?"
“As I see it, you are living with something that you keep hidden deep inside. Something heavy. I felt it from the first time I met you. You have a strong gaze, as if you have made up your mind about something. To tell you the truth, I myself carry such things around inside. Heavy things." Woohyun takes one finger and pokes Sunggyu in the chest, "That is how I can see it in you.”
Sunggyu held out his hand and tried to mimic the warmth that Woohyun's eyes always held, and said, “Let’s start over?”
“Of course. I can even cover my face if you want, since it makes you so upset.” This time, when Sunggyu punched Woohyun’s arm, it was met with safe laughter that made Sunggyu wonder why he was ever so damn afraid in the first place.
After that, they became quick and easy friends. Warm friends. Woohyun was the one Sunggyu found himself looking to when things went wrong, his second in command, as Woohyun liked to so often proclaim. He and Woohyun had much more in common then Sunggyu thought. They liked singing the same songs, they liked watching the same movies, and they both came from a place with barely any money and barely any love, as they soon found out after sneaking in one too many bottles of soju into their shared room, voices rough and scratchy the next morning during vocal practice from talking so much the night before.
Before he could even blink, it seemed that Sunggyu had let Woohyun in. He let him see the ugly parts of him that no one had ever seen before, and he let him change parts of him that he’d never thought even needed changing until Woohyun came along to throw the shades open and let sunlight pour in. Sunggyu squinted his eyes and may have gotten a little sunburnt, but he was smiling the whole time, anyway.
He was too young, stupid, and insecure to realize at that time - that he was about knee deep in love with Nam Woohyun. With one more push he'd tip over and become completely submerged in toothy smiles and warm laughs.
Sometimes, on those really really bad nights, when all Sunggyu can feel is that deep ache in his bones, he wishes he could go back and tell his younger self to keep his balance. To not ever fall in love with Woohyun. Because a decade later, he'd still be drowning and kicking his legs in an attempt to stay afloat.
Sunggyu remembers hearing somewhere that memories warm you up from the inside, but they also tear you apart. He never understood that - until Woohyun left. Why dwell on the past when the present is happening, spinning everyone round and round? But why was Sunggyu the only one who seemed even the slightest bit dizzy, shook with nausea and a sick feeling like he didn’t belong here? He belonged in a dorm with six other kids, all dented up and smashed together to make a perfectly imperfect family. He belonged with the boy with the toothy smile hidden behind stubby fingers that fit between his perfectly.
He for sure doesn’t belong here, with vacant eyes zoning in on the water pooled within the bowl before him, straining to focus on a distorted reflection of an almost unrecognizable Kim Sunggyu. Pressing clammy fingers into cold plastic vandalized by various specks of gray dust particles, Sunggyu tries in vain to vomit all of his mistakes and failures into the taunting toilet. It doesn’t work. But he continues anyway, listening to the sound of his heart beating rapidly in between suffocating ribs, relishes in the feel of his throat being torn apart, of his stomach screeching inaudibly about too many cheap shots and too many cheap chances.
Sunggyu’s way too old for this.
But the stinging in his throat and the cold porcelain against his cheek is about the only distraction he gets from the flashes of brunette hair and perfect noses that normally plays behind his eyelids every time they close.
There are thuds on the door, distant sounds of clashing lips and teeth and the echo of impending regrets.
Sunggyu’s still very vacant eyes peer blankly into the bowl as he repeats the process, vowing to himself, like he had all those years ago, to grow the hell up, bastard.
-
“If you're going to be my boyfriend, you have to stop crying during every drama.”
“You know I’m weak when it comes to dramas- wait, did you just call me your boyfriend?” Oh shit, Sunggyu had, hadn't he? And now Woohyun was never going to let him forget it. “Aww, can we get matching tshirts now, like I always wanted?”
“No. We can’t.” Woohyun looked at him with one of those faces, and Sunggyu broke. “Fine.”
“Hyung! No wait, I can finally call you Gyu-bear now too right? Aww Gyu-bear I'm so happy you're my boyfriend.”
“Oh god no. I take it back.”
“No take backs, Gyu-bear. You are stuck with me forever now. Mr. ‘I don't do relationships’, my ass.” Sunggyu had said that at the beginning of - whatever this is, when they were just fooling around to fool around. But somewhere between moist bed sheets and muffled pillow talk Sunggyu finally realized he needed to do something before Woohyun found someone else, probably someone who wasn't an emotionally stunted asshole like him.
He could tell Woohyun this, but instead he settled with the, “I don't do relationships. I only do you.”
“If they invent a car that runs on stupid jokes, you could go far.”
Woohyun nuzzles his head into Sunggyu’s neck and tries not to laugh while Sunggyu grumbles weak protests, but Sunggyu can't help but tighten his hold around Woohyun's shoulder and let the sound of the word forever ring in his ears. It sounds nice. It sounds like Christmas mornings with hot cocoa and candle lit dinner tables set for two.
As Sunggyu jolts awake from the memory that now plagues him in the form of a nightmare, he wipes the sweat off his forehead and thinks about how the word forever sounds like nails scratching against a chalkboard to him now. It sounds like lost opportunities and possibilities that he will never get back.
Maybe, in some distant place, everything is already, quietly, lost. Or at least there exists a silent place where everything can disappear, melting together in a single, overlapping figure. And as we live our lives we discover - drawing toward us the thin threads attached to each - what has been lost. Sunggyu closes his eyes and tries to bring to mind as many beautiful lost things as he could - Woohyun's messy hair in the mornings, Woohyun laughing at his terrible jokes, Woohyun's legs tangled with his underneath light blue bed sheets. He draws them closer and holds on tight. Knowing all the while that their lives are fleeting.
-
Infinite is kind of a cruel name for a boy band, Sunggyu thinks.
Two years have gone by since Infinite ended, but Sunggyu feels like it’s been a thousand. Memories and thoughts age, and now the times where he fell asleep with his eyes glued to Woohyun’s back for years are getting harder and harder to visualize. Was Woohyun’s blanket blue or yellow? He can’t seem to remember, these days. Some days, he can’t even seem to remember Woohyun’s face. The same face he used to run his fingers across, stopping at his nose to pinch it, getting a giggle to escape from the other. He never forgets the sound of Woohyun’s laugh and the edge to Woohyun’s smile, though he wishes he could.
Life moves on. Time does not halt no matter how much you scratch and scrape and no matter how many shots you take, despite how much they burn on the way down.
He gets a job at the company as a vocal coach, composing songs when he has free time. He can’t think of anything else to do with his life besides music. Most of his income comes from singing drama osts, which he is slightly ashamed of, but he does have bills to pay and a cat to feed. Myungsoo and Sungyeol have established acting careers by now, and Sungjong’s half way through university. Howon and Dongwoo choreograph for Woollim, so Sunggyu sees them more often than the others.
Sunggyu learns from Dongwoo on the phone one night that Woohyun’s back, the words whispered hesitantly like Dongwoo’s worried he might break him. Sunggyu can’t exactly say he doesn’t. The other members pretended not to notice how Sunggyu withdrew into himself after Woohyun left, but Dongwoo always knows. Sunggyu thinks he probably knew Sunggyu was in love with Woohyun before he knew it himself. He’s just like that, wise and perceptive despite not acting that way in the slightest.
Dongwoo and Howon take him out for drinks, and Sunggyu knows why. They pity him, probably. Howon even offers to pay, which never happens. He’s had multiple blind dates and two failed attempts at relationships in the past 6 months, and he looks like he’s been run over by a train or like he lost his best friend.
Sunggyu has tried to date, he really has, but every time had ended up in tears coming from the girls, calling him a cold and unfeeling asshole. They aren’t exactly wrong, though. He just feels nothing for them, no matter how hard he tried. He probably couldn’t even remember their faces now. Dongwoo had hesitantly recommended trying to date a man, but Sunggyu thinks that would just end up hurting him more, reminding him more of some other man that was off in a different country that Sunggyu couldn’t even pronounce.
By the third bottle of soju, Sunggyu is getting a little too vocal, but it’s like the words have been welled up inside of him for so long now, he wouldn’t be able to stop them even if he stapled his mouth shut. “Why’d he have to leave me, Dongwoo? He didn’t even give me a kiss goodbye.” Sunggyu sniffles, takes another shot. “Hell, he didn’t even tell me goodbye at all. Does he hate me that much? Did I mean that little to him? Was I just a quick and easy fuck when he was too busy to find anyone else?”
Howon looks at Dongwoo wide-eyed, like this is all new information to him, like he had no idea his hyungs were fucking for 10 years behind his back. “Is he talking about Woohyun? Wait a second, you and Woohyun were-” Dongwoo holds up his hand, cutting him off, because of course Dongwoo knew all along.
“Hyung, Woohyun doesn’t hate you. He sends you a postcard every few months, it’s not like he hasn’t tried to keep contact at all.” Oh yeah, the postcards. How dare Sunggyu forget the postcards. Sunggyu would almost rather have no contact at all. The single sheet of photo paper with a cheesy photo depicting whatever country Woohyun moved onto next, with an equally cheesy saying scribbled haphazardly on the back, succeeded in getting a scoff to escape from Sunggyu every time they arrived in his mailbox. Sunggyu could barely even recognize the handwriting anymore, the same handwriting he had once been able to forge with his eyes closed.
“He doesn’t hate me? Why hasn’t he called, then? I know he’s called you, and even talked to Howon, but can’t bother calling me even once in two whole years.” Sunggyu slams a fist on the table, tries to glare at Dongwoo, but just ends up faceplanting onto the table.
“He’s just-”
“Don’t give me excuses for Nam Woohyun, Dongwoo.” Sunggyu takes another shot. He checks his phone through blurry eyes, but has no missed calls. He doesn’t know why he still hopes to see Woohyun’s name flash across the screen. Or why he hasn’t deleted the number altogether.
Maybe Sunggyu is being dramatic. Maybe what they had together wasn’t anything, and he had imagined the warmth in Woohyun’s eyes and fingertips and mouth against his on those late nights when they’d finally get time in between busy schedules.
But the “I love you”s breathed against his stomach and thighs are still burned into his skin, and he can’t seem to stop running his fingers across the scars and remembering what could’ve been. Maybe if he’d been more open about his feelings, more direct with what he wanted, or if he’d agreed to coming out as a couple to the rest of the group, Woohyun would still be here, pouring him a shot with a not-so-secret hand on his thigh under the table.
But time weighs down on him like an old, ambiguous dream. He keeps on moving, trying to sleep through it. But even if he were go to the ends of the earth like Woohyun, he wouldn’t be able to escape it. It ticks in the back of his head, reminding him of a time bomb or maybe of Woohyun’s alarm clock going off at ungodly hours of the morning all those years ago in their shared room.
Sunggyu pours his own shot.
-
The next time Sunggyu sees Woohyun, it’s a Thursday.
When there’s a knock on Sunggyu’s door, he expects it to be the fried chicken he ordered. It’s Woohyun instead, black hair and no makeup, and Sunggyu thinks he looks younger than he did when they were idols. He looks the same yet completely different, and Sunggyu has to squint a little and make sure he isn’t just imagining things. It wouldn’t be the first time, after all.
“So, how have you been?” Woohyun asks, his voice sounds the same as Sunggyu remembers it and Sunggyu really wants to punch him in the face. He does.
“Nice to see you too.” Woohyun laughs and Sunggyu really wants to hug him. He does. And Woohyun smells more or less the same, less cologne and suffering, but Sunggyu likes the change. He feels less light in Sunggyu’s arm, like he’s actually been eating well, and Sunggyu is relieved.
Sunggyu’s been thinking of what he would say to Woohyun once he finally showed his face in front of him, all the things he’d yell at him for and all the things he’d been dying to tell him, but all he comes up with is the, “What the fuck.” Said into the skin of Woohyun’s neck. “What the fuck, Nam Woohyun, you fucking asshole.” Sunggyu squeezes Woohyun harder, and thinks that he should have punched him way harder earlier.
The fried chicken finally comes, and they sit at Sunggyu’s kitchen table and share it, a couple bottles of soju Woohyun finds in Sunggyu’s fridge on the table between them. Sunggyu gets Woohyun some paper towels to soak up the blood that is dripping from his bottom lip.
Woohyun doesn’t try to explain and Sunggyu doesn’t ask him to, even though that’s all he’s wanted to ask him for the years he’s been gone. It’s okay, though, because underneath all the hurt masked with anger, Sunggyu understands. Deep down, he knows why Woohyun left, and he’s made peace with it, at least somewhat. Woohyun is the type to run away, he always has been, and when Infinite came to it’s inevitable end, there was no place for Woohyun to go but far far away. He wanted to avoid being hurt. Avoid being reminded.
Sunggyu just wishes Woohyun knew that he had Sunggyu to run to. That, instead, he left Sunggyu to bear all of that pain alone, left him to gather all the discarded pieces of their decade spent together and glue it into something he could try and hold onto.
They talk for hours just like they used to. Two years really isn’t that long, after all, and old habits rise to the surface when their hands join each other’s from across the table. Woohyun tells him about all the places he visited in the last two years. About the time in China when he was almost killed, and how pretty the sunset in Australia is compared to here. He talks about how Paris at night reminded him of Sunggyu, and how badly he wanted to call him. Why didn’t you? stays on the tip of Sunggyu’s tongue and sets it on fire. He tells him how he met a really nice girl in Thailand who had a voice that reminded him of Sunggyu’s, and Sunggyu almost cries.
Sunggyu ends up telling him about his many failed relationships, how he searched for a smile that could rival Woohyun’s, but never really could. Woohyun smiles at that and Sunggyu really wants to punch him in the face again. He settles for the arm instead. Sunggyu talks about the new girl band Woollim’s debuting, and Woohyun looks so proud when Sunggyu mentions he wrote the title song.
Sometime between the second and third bottle of soju, Woohyun admits he’d watched all the dramas Sunggyu sang osts for, and Sunggyu makes fun of him mercilessly. “Not even my mom watched those dramas. You must have really missed me.” But Sunggyu is smiling and his face feels really warm.
“I did.” Woohyun squeezes his hand and uses the other to touch Sunggyu’s cheek, gentle and hesitant like he’s afraid he might burn him, “I really missed you, so much.”
“Then why did you leave me?”
“I’m sorry, Sunggyu. I’m really sorry.” And now Woohyun’s crying, tears smearing cheeks marred with traces of previous blemishes. And maybe it’s the alcohol in Sunggyu’s system, or the traces of memories resurfacing, that cause Sunggyu to do it, but in the next moment Sunggyu’s lips are on Woohyun’s.
Woohyun kisses exactly how Sunggyu remembers, all lips and teeth and hands moving to cup the back of his neck, tugging him closer and holding on so tight like he’s terrified he will slip away. But Woohyun has nothing to be afraid of, because he is never going anywhere. Or letting Woohyun disappear again. This time, he will scream and yell and tie him down, because no way is he losing his best friend again.
“I’m sorry” Woohyun whispers over and over, and Sunggyu thinks of stage lights and cheering fans and countless nights spent on the roof. He thinks of Woohyun’s lips finding his for the first time in the darkness of their shared room all those years ago, voice hesitant and uncharacteristically quiet as he admitted that he might be in love with him. He thinks of Woohyun’s voice blending perfectly with his, of Woohyun’s fingers fitting perfectly between his own. He thinks of how empty the last two years had felt without his second in command, his best friend, his Woohyun.
“Shut up, you idiot.” Sunggyu kisses him again, wet and reassuring, “I forgive you.” And when Woohyun chuckles against his lips Sunggyu finally lets himself stop thinking for the first time since Woohyun left.