lightkeeper

by vesperal

Summary:

Yeonjun's heart is a stormy sea. Soobin is the first ray of sunlight peeking through the clouds.

Or: Yeonjun and Soobin, their path towards debut, and their path towards healing.

 

He wants Soobin to see all those little pieces of him, and he wants him to put them together like a puzzle. He wants Soobin to see him, the whole him, a person Yeonjun himself barely knows, and, selfishly, he wants Soobin to love him.

Notes:

i have never felt more anxious to publish something & yet i have never felt more relieved either. writing this completely drained me, in both a good way and a bad way. i have no expectations in putting this out there. even if no one read this it would still have accomplished exactly what it was supposed to: catharsis.

that said, if you are going to read this, please mind the tags. there's nothing particularly graphic or specific in this but it could still be triggering for some, so tread carefully.
for this fic in particular i also feel the need to say: this is a work of pure fiction and the characters portrayed in it are in no way reflections of their real life counterparts.
as for the timeline, the same thing applies - the order of events depicted here is certainly not accurate in the slightest. but this fic is about feelings and impressions more than it is about events, anyway.

i

Who hasn’t ever wondered: am I a monster or is this what it means to be a person?

 

Yeonjun doesn’t think of himself as a good person. His mother does, and when she calls him her healing it always makes his heart feel just a little lighter, more like a heart and less like a dead weight in his chest. But he knows that the Yeonjun his mother sees isn’t the same Yeonjun everyone else sees. His mother sees him through sepia-tinted memories, a carefree child laughing in the sun, untouched by the cold of winter and the harsh technicolor of reality. And Yeonjun has changed a lot, since then. If he ever really was that boy in her memories. 

Yeonjun isn’t that smiling boy. Yeonjun has a monster living in his chest, a monster that’s always hungry, never sated. He doesn’t want to be like this - all sharp edges, with a fire blazing hot inside him, burning anyone who gets too close - but he is. That’s the price of ambition. The monster inside him is too hungry to let Yeonjun be kind. 

That’s why every time a new trainee shows up, Yeonjun has to show them. He has to show them how it feels to stand too close to Choi Yeonjun and burn. He makes them read out his name, his ranking, and he thinks that maybe, if he can get enough of them to believe that he’s the best, then it’ll finally be true. They look up at him with big eyes, wide with fear and admiration, and he grins down at them, razor sharp and a little cruel, over and over until all their faces blend into one, one face, one pair of big expectant eyes staring up at him in his nightmares. But he hears the whispers - Choi Yeonjun is always at the top of the board, Choi Yeonjun is the best, Choi Yeonjun will debut, for sure - and that makes it all worth it. It has to, because why else would Yeonjun keep doing it? 

He tries to tell himself that fear and admiration are just as good as love. He ignores the ache in his chest, deep deep down where the monster hasn’t quite reached yet, where a shadow of the boy in those sepia-tinted fantasies lives on, hand outstretched, reaching for something, anything, anyone.

The monster is hungrier than usual, the day Yeonjun meets Choi Soobin. He hadn’t done as well as usual in his monthly evaluations, had stumbled halfway through a line, tongue tripping over the lyrics. One of the evaluators had raised an eyebrow at him like he expected better. Yeonjun had felt like he was going to throw up, but distantly, as if it was happening to someone else. And then he really had thrown up, in the toilets afterwards, and the acid had burned his throat on the way up. 

He’d brushed his teeth three times, trying to get the taste out of his mouth, but it had lingered nonetheless, like it had sunk into his tongue and his palate and his teeth. He still feels sour and corrosive an hour later when he walks into the practice room and sees the new trainee standing there.

He’s tall, and he stands like his body is too big for him, awkward and stretched out in all the wrong places like the one-size-too-big pants Yeonjun’s mom always used to buy him because she said he’d grow into them. His nose ends in a gentle curve at the tip, his prominent cupid’s bow is a little shiny with sweat, and he still has layers of baby fat on his cheeks, soft and squishy. Yeonjun glances at the board with the rankings. His name is still at the top - he thinks if it wasn’t, he would probably disintegrate, turning into dust and drifting away in the wind. But the score written in blocky numbers next to his name is lower than it was last time, and he feels something dark curl in his stomach. The monster rears its head. 

“What’s your name, newbie?” he says, bitter like the bile that lingers in his mouth. The kid looks up at him. He has big eyes, slightly asymmetrical, reflecting the cheap fluorescent practice room lights and making them look like stars dotted around an inky black sky. Yeonjun grins, vaguely predatory.

“Choi Soobin,” the kid says, voice soft and quiet. Yeonjun almost feels bad for him. There’s no way he’ll last in the shark-infested waters of the trainee dorms. A part of him, very small and very quiet - a part that Yeonjun has put a lot of effort into silencing - kind of wants to take the kid under his wing.

“Take a look at that board,” he says instead. He’s done this enough times now that it feels like reading from a script. “Do you know what it is?”

Choi Soobin turns towards the rankings board and studies it for a moment, lips pursed slightly. Yeonjun doesn’t have to look. He sees that board every time he closes his eyes. Vocal, Rap, Dance. 1, 1, 1. 

“Um. A trainee ranking?” Choi Soobin says, a little hesitant, glancing at Yeonjun like he’s not quite sure where he’s going with this. Yeonjun nods, wooden, robotic.

“Now at the top. Read out the first line for every column.”

Soobin looks at him. His big black eyes are wide, swirling with confusion and a little bit of fear. “Vocal. Number one, Choi Yeonjun,” he says. Yeonjun hums. Soobin continues. “Rap. Number one, Choi Yeonjun. Dance. Number one, Choi Yeonjun.”

Yeonjun lets his face split into a grin. It feels wrong, like he’s wearing someone else’s face over his own. “Can you guess what my name is, now?”

Soobin looks over at him again. Yeonjun can’t read anything in his eyes now - they’re carefully blank, as if he’s pulled the curtains shut over the windows. He takes a step back and bows, back straight, arms held neatly against his sides. “It’s nice to meet you, Choi Yeonjun-ssi,” he says, and then he turns around and walks away.

Yeonjun is left feeling distinctly off-balance, like he’s been plucked off dry land and thrown onto a ship, fighting to stay afloat. The monster inside feels even hungrier than before, somehow. It feels like it’s clawing and scratching at Yeonjun’s chest from the inside, banging on the walls, fighting to get out so it can chase after Choi Soobin and swallow him whole. Yeonjun presses a hand to his sternum, and is almost surprised to feel his heart thumping against his palm through the bone. 

-

ii

If I was bound for hell let it be hell. No more false heavens. No more damned magic. You hate me and I hate you. We’ll see who hates best.

 

He sees Soobin around quite a lot, after that. It’s inevitable, what with how cramped the trainee dorms and practice rooms are, but it feels like every time he’s in the vicinity, Yeonjun’s eyes are drawn to him. It’s like Yeonjun is a compass, but his magnetic north is Choi Soobin. 

Soobin is quiet, but hard-working. He’s not much of a dancer yet, his limbs a little too long and awkward, but Yeonjun has a feeling he’ll get there eventually. Sometimes, when he catches Soobin glaring at himself in the mirror after messing up a move one too many times, he wants to tell him what he sees in him. Something about those sad eyes tugs at his heartstrings, brings out a part of him he doesn’t want to acknowledge - the sweet, kind-hearted boy from those sepia-colored memories. 

So he ignores Soobin, instead, and watches from a distance as the younger boy settles into his new life as a trainee. Soobin has a good voice, he finds out. His lower range is smooth and warm, and it feels kind of like drinking a steaming mug of hot chocolate on a cold winter’s day. (It’s been a long time since Yeonjun has had hot chocolate. He sticks to the trainee diet religiously. He wants this too badly to risk it over food.) Soobin has a beautiful falsetto, too, light and airy and effortless, and it makes Yeonjun’s chest swell with contradictory feelings, a mess of I could listen to him sing for hours and Why can’t I sound like that . 

When Yeonjun can get his head screwed on straight enough to think rationally about Choi Soobin - which is pretty rare, these days - he thinks the younger boy has a pretty good chance at debuting. He’s still struggling a little with dance, sure, but he hasn’t been a trainee for very long, and he’s already started to improve. And what he lacks in that department, he makes up for with his voice, pretty and perfectly suited for the fresh, youthful concept the company is rumored to have settled on for their new boy group.

And, well, Soobin himself is pretty. He’s still coming out of that awkward phase of puberty, shoulders a little hunched, skin a little greasy, but he stands out from the other trainees. Not just because of his height - although that definitely helps - but because he’s attractive, noticeably so, eye-catching and magnetic, with his distinctive mix of K-drama male lead charm and bunny-like cuteness. Yeonjun catches himself thinking about Soobin’s face far, far too often, and then expends entirely too much energy trying very hard not to think about him, or about how much he’s been thinking about him, lately. 

Then he starts thinking about how he needs to find a way to get Soobin to like him, if they’re going to be debuting together. The monster in his chest says rival , the boy his mother called her healing says teammate , but Yeonjun collars and muzzles them both, drags them back to sit quietly in his chest where they’re supposed to, and reminds himself that he can’t afford to think about debut like it’s a done deal. He’s not there yet. At night, when he can’t sleep, fear claws at his chest, icy tendrils creeping up his spine, reminding him that he might never get there at all.

Soobin has his pretty voice, his pretty face, his soft, kind heart. Yeonjun sees the way the other trainees look at him - trust, fondness. There’s something about Soobin - everyone loves him. Yeonjun only has himself - his grit, his ambition, the monster in his chest pushing him forward every day. He has the rankings on the board telling him he’s the best, even though he’s never felt like it, not once. He has the other trainees’ admiration, and their fear. It’s enough. It has to be enough. If it’s not enough, then Yeonjun will have to accept the fact that he is not enough, and he thinks that might break him.

It’s like mountaineering. Yeonjun’s never tried it, but he’s read about it. You have to keep moving, through the snow, the storms, the darkness, because if you stop, even for a minute, the mountain takes you. You sit down, and you’ll never get back up again. Yeonjun has to keep moving, keep going, keep practicing, because if he stops then he’ll lose himself for good. 

So Yeonjun stops looking at Soobin and starts looking at himself instead. He looks at himself in the mirror, takes note of every flaw, every mistake in the choreography, every voice crack, every time his tongue trips over the lyrics. And then he takes all those little things and feeds them to the monster, and he feels it get bigger and angrier, sticky syrupy darkness filling his chest, and he feels the sepia-tinted boy suffocating, running out of space, and he sits in the corners of dark rooms at night and cries when nobody’s watching. 

He lets himself hate Choi Soobin, just a little bit. He wipes away tears and checks the time to make sure no one will find him like this, and he thinks about the locked doors that Choi Soobin has forced open and the boarded up windows that he’s smashed through, and he hates him. 

And when his time runs out he picks himself up and stuffs everything back inside his chest, hidden and locked up where it belongs, and he ignores the little voice telling him that he really doesn’t hate Choi Soobin at all. It doesn’t matter, either way. Choi Soobin is not the sort of person that someone like Yeonjun should even be thinking about. Soobin is the gentle warmth of spring. Yeonjun is a pitch black sky above a roiling sea. They belong to different worlds.

-

iii

I do not know if your bones ache the way mine do when I do not have you near. I don’t know if I want to know, either.

 

In many ways, Kang Taehyun’s arrival turns Yeonjun’s world upside down even more than Soobin’s had. Yeonjun has been sleeping poorly, and barely eating. Nobody has noticed. Every time he messes up during practice he thinks back to that evaluator’s face, twisted up in disappointment. It feels like it’s been longer than a week. It feels like it could have happened in another lifetime. But it keeps Yeonjun up at night, tossing and turning, grasping at shadows of ghosts, because who is he if he’s no longer the best ? 

Kang Taehyun has very large eyes. They’re the first thing Yeonjun notices when he walks up to him in the practice room. They’re very big, very dark, and a little unnerving as they flit back and forth between Yeonjun’s face and the rankings board. Yeonjun smiles at him, toothy and fake, the same smile he smiles for every new trainee. When Taehyun reads out his name and his rankings, his voice is quiet but firm, confident. For once, Yeonjun doesn’t wait for an answer after his usual “Guess who I am?” spiel. He brings a hand down on Taehyun’s shoulder, a little too forceful to be friendly, and walks away. 

He tells himself it has nothing to do with Soobin, standing in the corner of the room, watching them with curious eyes. 

“Ignore him,” Soobin says, walking up to Taehyun as the door swings shut behind Yeonjun, not quite quick enough to cut the words off in time. “He does that with every new trainee. I think he’s just insecure.”

Yeonjun isn’t prepared for how much that hurts. He’s aware, distantly, that Soobin dislikes him. He’s also aware that he did that to himself. But to hear, straight from his mouth, how little he thinks of Yeonjun, when he’s all Yeonjun’s been able to think about all week - it hurts.

He has to stop, lean against the wall outside the practice room, and press a hand to his chest until he feels like he can breathe again.

Then comes the anger. It wells up in his chest slowly, like a tidal wave. The monster rears its head and roars. The winds pick up. How dare he , Yeonjun seethes, how dare he talk about Yeonjun like that. Just insecure. He scoffs. Soobin’s an idiot, he thinks, viciously, if he truly believes that’s why Yeonjun behaves the way that he does. 

Yeonjun has to fight the urge to walk back into that room and give him a piece of his mind. All of a sudden, he desperately wants Soobin to see him. Not just the mask, not just the Yeonjun who’s needlessly cruel to new trainees, not just the Yeonjun that peeks through the cracks in the facade, the one that Soobin calls insecure. He wants Soobin to see the Yeonjun who cries in practice rooms late at night. He wants him to see the Yeonjun who fidgets with his phone for minutes on end, wanting so badly to call his mother, but never finding the courage to do it. He wants him to see the Yeonjun in those sepia-tinted memories, the one he’s not quite sure is real. He wants Soobin to see all those little pieces of him, and he wants him to put them together like a puzzle. He wants Soobin to see him, the whole him, a person Yeonjun himself barely knows, and, selfishly, he wants Soobin to love him.

It’s a stupid thought, the kind that Yeonjun knows full well he can’t indulge in if he wants to make it in this world. He tears it out of his brain, screws it up into a little ball and discards it on the floor in the hallway. He tries not to imagine Soobin walking out of the room, stumbling across it, picking up Yeonjun’s tangled mess of feelings and pressing it into his chest until it sinks under the skin, under the bone, and lodges itself in his heart.

That night he finds an empty practice room and cries for longer than he usually would, too torn up inside to be careful. He runs into Taehyun on the way out. His big eyes look up at him, taking in the tear stains on Yeonjun’s pale, sunken cheeks, the redness around his eyes. He keeps his mouth sealed shut, and steps aside to let Yeonjun pass. Neither of them say a word about it, not that night, nor any other night after. But he keeps catching Taehyun staring at him with pity in his eyes, and it makes him hate him a little bit. It’s exhausting. 

Three more weeks go by like that. Yeonjun feels like a zombie. Some days it feels like he expends more energy avoiding Soobin and Taehyun’s gazes in the mirrors than actually practicing. Maybe that’s what leads to this - the rankings board, updated after their monthly evaluations, and Yeonjun’s world crumbling around him. 

Dance, 1, Choi Yeonjun , it says. Rap, 1, Choi Yeonjun . And then, next to that: Vocal, 1. Kang Taehyun . 

Further down, just underneath it: Choi Yeonjun. 2.

Through the white noise buzzing in his ears, he hears the whispers from the trainees around him. Choi Yeonjun isn’t number 1 in everything anymore? 

Someone behind him scoffs, a little too loudly. He won’t be able to pull that shit with the new trainees anymore, at least . 

Yeonjun closes his eyes, then opens them again, staring at the board like it’s going to change, like it’s all just a bad dream. Distantly, he notes that Soobin’s name is on the board, as well. Vocal, 4, Choi Soobin . It’s good, for a first monthly evaluation. Of course, Yeonjun had been number 1 in everything the first month, and every month after that too. Until now. The 2 stares down at him from the board, stark black marker against the white background. Yeonjun feels like he’s floating outside of his body again. 

Slowly, he turns around and walks out of the room. His eyes are burning. All he can focus on is putting one foot in front of the other. You can’t sit down , he reminds himself. You’ll freeze to death . The whispers follow him out into the hallway. He wants, so desperately, to sit down and give up. His chest feels full enough to burst, in the worst possible way. The monster roars and rages inside him, and it feels like his ribs are shattering. He breathes and the fragments fill his lungs, tearing them up from the inside. 

There’s a hand on his shoulder. He turns around, and Taehyun himself is standing behind him, looking at him with concern etched into the lines of his face. Yeonjun hates him for it. He’d feel more comfortable if Taehyun were smug and boastful. This - the worry, the pity - is worse than anything else could possibly be. He feels acid crawling up his esophagus. He sees Taehyun’s lips moving, but he doesn’t hear what comes out. He closes his eyes, and a tear slips out. It doesn’t matter. Taehyun’s seen it before, or, well, he’s seen the aftermath of it, at least. But he can’t let the other trainees see him like this. He slips out of Taehyun’s grasp and walks away. 

-

iv

If I am for others, then who is for me? And if I am for myself, then what am I for? 

 

Yeonjun allocates himself exactly three days to wallow in self-pity before he pulls himself together. He sleeps a lot, eats even less than before, drags himself half-heartedly to practice, and steadfastly ignores all the eyes on him. They’re not discreet in the slightest. He feels vaguely like a wounded gazelle that’s been thrown into the lion’s den. He can feel them circling, waiting for him to falter, to fall. He can’t give them that satisfaction. 

He can’t help but notice, through the haze of misery, that Soobin doesn’t look at him once.

The third day comes to a close with him crying in a practice room again. It’s starting to become a bad habit, one that he knows he needs to break. But he’s more careful about how long he stays there, this time. He knows he needs to get back to work. The darkness in his chest rages harder with every day of inaction. If he’s not good enough, the only solution is to get better. 

When he steps out into the hallway, all the lights are out except for one, in one of the other practice rooms. The door is ajar, and the yellowish light spills out over Yeonjun’s sneakers. Yeonjun isn’t particularly interested in what’s going on in there, he just has to walk past it on his way out, but suddenly a voice he recognizes speaks up, and he freezes.

“I’m worried about him, you know.” It’s Kang Taehyun. Yeonjun knows, instantly, that he’s talking about him.

He hears a scoff, and that’s another voice he recognizes. “Stop wasting your energy on him. You know he’d never do the same for anyone else.” It’s Soobin.

Taehyun sighs. “You don’t know him as well as you think you do, Soobin-hyung.” His voice is tight, anxious. Yeonjun almost feels bad for him, although he’s not quite sure why.

“Stop beating yourself up over this, Tyun,” Soobin says. “It’s not your fault you’re better than him.” Ah. There it is.

“I just did better than him this month. That doesn’t mean anything. Besides, that’s not what this is about, not really. I think he’s just lonely.”

That’s a lot to unpack. Yeonjun kind of wants to walk into the room and punch Taehyun in the face, both for his irritating modesty, and the way he speaks like he’s known Yeonjun forever - like he knows him better than he knows himself.

“You’re overthinking it,” Soobin says, bitter and dismissive. Yeonjun thinks he might have underestimated how much Soobin hates him. “He has an oversized ego, and you bruised it. He’ll be fine. He’s an asshole, Taehyunnie, stop worrying about him.”

Yeonjun can practically hear the frown in Taehyun’s voice. “I think you’re being the asshole right now, Soobin-hyung.”

Yeonjun steps away from the door and walks away, on autopilot. He doesn’t want to hear them arguing over him. He’s heard enough. He feels rattled, and a little petulant. He doesn’t really think he’s done enough for Soobin to hate him with this much dedication, but whatever. He can’t quite decide who he’s more upset with - Soobin, for his bitterness, his childish hatred, his rejection, or Taehyun for his pity, his unwarranted kindness, his intuition. It doesn’t matter. They don’t matter. What matters is training, what matters is debuting, what matters is that 2 in shiny black on white on that board.

Yeonjun wakes up bright and early the next morning and throws himself back into practicing with everything he has. He spends hours and hours in the studio, practicing his runs and his high notes and his diction and everything in between, and then he comes back to the dorms and drinks tea with honey in it for his throat. By the time the next monthly evaluations roll around Yeonjun is thinner than ever, the circles under his eyes so dark they look like bruises, but he’s ready to fight for that number one spot, and he’s managed to shove his unfortunate crush on Choi Soobin back into the darkest recesses of his mind where it can’t bother him.

The evaluations go well, better than ever, maybe, and Yeonjun is happy to see his hard work pay off. The monster sits quiet and content in his chest, rumbling and stretching languidly like a satisfied cat basking in the sun. When the results go up later that afternoon, Yeonjun hides in the bathroom and waits until most of the other trainees have left the room to go in. 

Vocal, 1, Choi Yeonjun . He feels a little light-headed with relief, off balance like he can feel the earth spinning on its axis beneath his feet, everything slotting back into place. His chest feels full, in a good way this time, sticky and dark with pride and satisfaction. He smiles, a small thing meant only for himself, but then he glimpses someone walking up to him out of the corner of his eye and he wipes it straight off his face.

Kang Taehyun stands in front of him. His eyes are so big and earnest Yeonjun feels like he might fall in them and drown, if he’s not careful. “Congratulations, Yeonjun-ssi,” Taehyun says. Yeonjun lets a smile creep back onto his face, not quite comfortable, but sincere, genuine in a stilted, awkward way.

“Thank you, Taehyun-ssi. Congratulations to you too,” he says, because Taehyun is still second on the vocal ranking, and he’s ranked number 5 in dance, too. “You can call me hyung, if you’d like.” He’s not entirely sure where that comes from, but it feels like the right thing to say. Taehyun smiles at him. 

“Okay, Yeonjun-hyung,” he says, and Yeonjun feels light and airy somewhere behind his ribs. Maybe that’s why he does what he does next.

He turns to Soobin, who’s standing off to the side waiting for Taehyun with a frown on his face. Soobin is ranked number 3 in vocals, and he’s on the board in dance as well, although he’s still quite far down. “Congratulations to you too, Soobin-ssi,” he says. Soobin stays silent and stony-faced. Yeonjun swallows his disappointment, attempts a smile that probably looks more like a grimace, and walks out of the room. 

“Soobin-hyung, what the fuck?” he hears on his way out, and he thinks that Taehyun and Soobin should learn to be more careful about waiting until he’s actually left the room to start talking about him. He tries to ignore how nice it feels to have someone stand up for him, because if he thinks too hard about it he’ll be forced to deal with the fact that he kind of brought this all on himself, and he wants to let himself enjoy this bubble of happiness just a little longer. 

That night, in the trainee dorms, Taehyun approaches him again and asks him for his number. Yeonjun types his number into Taehyun’s phone, and thinks about how long it’s been since he last interacted with someone like this, without the constant tension in his chest, without thinking rival before teammate . It fills him with golden light like the autumn sun. 

Then Soobin walks past, glaring at him, and some other trainees stare at him when he walks past them and start whispering together very conspicuously, and he remembers he still has a long way to go. He thinks about all the versions of himself that exist in other people’s heads, and wonders which one is really him. He wonders if any of them are. He wonders if there really is a him , behind all the layers of fear and blind, boundless ambition. He lies in bed and thinks about peeling all those layers back like peeling an onion, and he wonders if it would make him cry, too. He wonders if it would hurt. He thinks he might be willing to do it anyway. 

-

v

Perhaps love is to give one’s own solitude to others? For it is the very last thing we have to offer.

 

Taehyun is nice, in a way that feels dangerous, mainly because it’s distracting. Yeonjun goes out for lunch with him and doesn’t think about how badly it’s going to mess up his diet until he gets back. Yeonjun hangs out with him at the studio during breaks and ends up practicing far less than he intended to. 

The next month, Taehyun and Yeonjun switch places on the vocal ranking again. For once, Yeonjun fights back against the monster raging in his chest, pushes down the little voice telling him that Taehyun did this on purpose. Taehyun looks up at him with big, worried eyes, and Yeonjun smiles at him, a little shaky, but sincere, and congratulates him. Taehyun smiles back. Everything’s okay. Soobin looks over at them suspiciously. Yeonjun fights very hard not to look back. 

The month after that, they switch places again. Yeonjun’s body floods with relief, but he rationalizes it this time, doesn’t get light-headed with it. And then Soobin walks over and offers his congratulations, tense and uncomfortable, but it’s something , it’s progress, and that does make Yeonjun a little light-headed. Yeonjun congratulates him back, and smiles, and hopes he’s not as transparent as he fears he might be. 

There hasn’t been a new trainee in a while, so when Huening Kai arrives, he makes waves. He’s young, short and pimply, and looks a little lost. For the first time, Yeonjun doesn’t mention the board when he introduces himself. 

“Hi,” he says. “I’m Yeonjun, you can call me hyung. Welcome!”

He knows he sounds awkward, stilted, but behind all his bravado, he doesn’t really know how to talk to people. Huening Kai smiles back at him, nonetheless. He has braces. It’s kind of cute. 

Then Soobin walks in, and immediately starts cooing over Huening Kai. The younger boy flushes bright red under the attention. It would be adorable, if Yeonjun wasn’t fighting off a wave of bitter jealousy. 

It’s fine. Yeonjun doesn’t want Soobin to call him cute and throw his arm around his shoulders like that, anyway. It’s totally fine. The monster stirs awake in his chest, but he frowns and pushes it down. Kai is barely more than a kid. Yeonjun can be nice, for once. He catches Taehyun’s eye, and the younger raises an eyebrow at him. Yeonjun loses all his carefully kept composure. He flushes bright red, redder than Huening Kai, even, and walks out of the room.

An unfortunate side effect of this is that Soobin decides to stop talking to him. He spends pretty much every waking moment with Kai, and it’s obvious that it’s just friendly, brotherly affection, but Yeonjun still feels uncomfortable, mainly with himself, for the way he reacted. He feels like it’s all been two steps forward, one step back. 

I just want him to like me , he thinks, curled up in bed at night, alone with his thoughts. Is that so much to ask?

Taehyun tells him he should stop being a coward and clear up the misunderstanding. Yeonjun doesn’t see how he could possibly clear up the misunderstanding without implicitly admitting that he’s half in love with Soobin. He does absolutely nothing, and they remain stuck in limbo like that. 

Yeonjun goes out of his way to be as nice as possible to Huening Kai, at least. It’s not easy when he can pretty much never catch him without Soobin stuck to his side. Whenever Soobin does catch him trying to spend time with Huening Kai, he glares at him like Yeonjun’s trying to steal him away or something. Yeonjun really can’t win. 

At least Huening Kai’s settling in well. He has a good voice. Yeonjun hears him practicing in the studio sometimes, although he tries to stay away, for the most part. Despite his best efforts, some things about Kai make the monster in his chest swell a little bit again, straining against the little bubble that Yeonjun has confined it to. His voice is one of those things. His relationship with Soobin is another. 

Kai ranks third in his first monthly evaluation. Yeonjun is still first. It makes it a little easier to be as happy for Kai as the rest of them are. And he is happy for Kai, really. He tries not to let the way Soobin sweeps Kai up in his arms put a damper on that happiness, and for the most part, he’s successful. Soobin hugs Kai like a younger brother he’s known forever. Soobin won’t even look at Yeonjun, and goes out of his way to never end up alone in a room with him. It’s okay. The fact that Yeonjun can’t even put away his jealousy for Kai’s sake is proof enough that deep down, he’s still not deserving of Soobin’s affection, of his attention, of him . He’s still not enough. But he’s used to that. 

What he’s not used to is this - walking into a practice room later that night and finding Soobin curled up in a corner in the dark, sobbing into his knees. Yeonjun freezes, wondering whether he should just walk away. Soobin looks up. Their eyes meet, and Soobin’s face crumples. In the next heartbeat, Yeonjun is next to him, gathering him up in his arms. He feels so small like this. His tears soak into Yeonjun’s shirt, and Yeonjun’s mind empties, quiet and calm. All he can think about is how he would do anything, anything , to make Soobin’s tears disappear. In that moment, nothing else matters.

“It’s so dumb,” Soobin sniffles into Yeonjun shirt. Yeonjun should probably find it gross. He doesn’t. 

“If it’s making you feel this way, it isn’t,” he says. He wonders where the words are coming from. He has never had words like this for himself.

“It really is. And I feel like the worst person ever, because I called you an asshole for this exact same thing.”

Realization dawns on Yeonjun. “Is this because Hyuka pushed you down the ranking?”

Soobin sobs harder. Yeonjun hates himself a little bit, wishes he could tie his tongue up forever so he’d stop saying dumb shit around Soobin. “Don’t say it like that,” the younger boy whines. Yeonjun apologizes quietly, muffled against Soobin’s ruffled hair.

“It’s not like that, anyway, not really,” Soobin says, when he’s finally calmed down a little. “It’s not about Kai. It’s about me, I guess. I feel like I’m not good enough. I’m scared, because what if I don’t debut? What if I’m doing all this for nothing? And I feel like an asshole, because I couldn’t be happy for Kai, not fully, and because I’ve treated you like shit for months even though I’m no better.”

Yeonjun laughs, humorless and self-deprecating. “Listen to me, Choi Soobin. That couldn’t be further from the truth.” He pauses, chooses his next words carefully. “We’re all scared. We’re all, I don’t know, overworked and sleep deprived and stressed and whatever else. You’re not a bad person for having an emotional reaction to a minor setback. That doesn’t make you an asshole. You were happy for Kai, you are , you celebrated with him and you showed him that.”

Soobin removes his face from Yeonjun’s shirt, sniffling. His eyes are red, and so is the tip of his nose. His cheeks are still wet, but he’s stopped crying. Yeonjun wonders what it says about him, that his first thought is he’s still beautiful. Always so beautiful . 

“And… you have been a bit of a dick to me, sure,” Yeonjun adds, carefully. “But I kinda deserved it.” 

Soobin laughs, a little wet still. “You did deserve it, at first. But you haven’t deserved it for a while now, hyung. I’m sorry.”

Yeonjun smiles at him. His heart explodes with golden light, and he hopes it isn’t reflected in his eyes. “It’s okay,” he says, because he doesn’t think he can say anything more without accidentally spilling his guts, pouring all his ugly, repressed feelings out onto the polished practice room floor. 

Soobin smiles back. It feels like the clouds are parting above him. It feels like the first rays of sunlight caressing the crown of his head on a spring morning. It feels too good to be real. 

-

vi

It’s an old story, really: there’s a boy - you think you know how the rest of this goes.

 

It’s a day like any other when Yeonjun gets pulled aside by company staff and taken to a big meeting room he’s never been in before. Soobin and Taehyun are already there, waiting, and Yeonjun thinks he might know what this is about, but he doesn’t dare to hope. There’s another boy here, too, a boy Yeonjun has never seen before, sitting awkwardly across from Taehyun, staring at his hands where they’re curled up in his lap. He has long, dark hair, hanging into his eyes, and a pretty face, like something straight out of a magazine. Yeonjun sits down opposite Soobin, and smiles at him. 

Soobin smiles back, and flowers bloom in Yeonjun’s heart all over again. They’ve been getting closer, ever since Yeonjun found him on that practice room floor. It’s been both a blessing and a curse. A blessing, because this is all Yeonjun has ever wanted, really - for Soobin to look at him without contempt in his eyes. For Soobin to look at him at all. A curse, because he falls a little further in love with him every day, as cliché as it is. Some days he feels like he might suffocate on it. 

The door squeaks open again, and Huening Kai walks in. He scurries across the room and practically throws himself into the seat next to Soobin. Yeonjun finds it endearing, now that he too knows what it’s like to have Soobin’s smile turned on him. He has dimples. It feels like staring straight at the sun on a bright summer day. Yeonjun does it anyway, even if it burns. The pain is a reminder that he’s human.

A man walks in after Kai, one that Yeonjun hasn’t seen before, in a tailored business suit, neat hair, sharp eyes. He sits at the head of the table, sets the stack of papers he’s carrying down in front of him, squares up the corners. The silence is thick and cloying, a tangible thing, creeping down Yeonjun’s throat, up his nose, suffocating him. 

At last, the man speaks. “I’m sure you all know why you’re here.” Yeonjun trembles. “You’ve been selected to debut. All five of you. You will be BigHit’s newest boy group: Tomorrow X Together.”

Through the haze of emotion, the earth-shattering feeling of everything that he’s ever worked for finally becoming real, Yeonjun wonders who the five of them are supposed to be. The new guy? Surely they’re not going to debut a kid who’s only just joined the company.

“I’d like you all to meet Choi Beomgyu,” the man in the suit says, gesturing at the boy. He still hasn’t looked up from his hands. “He’ll be debuting with you. Please greet him kindly,” he finishes, and Yeonjun swears he feels his gaze on him when he says that. Yeonjun frowns down at the table. The worst part is, it’s probably a necessary reminder. He can already feel the monster stirring, wondering what exactly it is about Choi Beomgyu that’s so special that they’d put him straight in the debut group, with no regular trainee period to speak of. 

There’s silence in the room again. The man looks at them expectantly. Another awkward beat, and then they’re all scrambling to get up, to leave. Then they’re in the hallway outside, not quite sure what to do. 

“Let’s go for a meal,” Taehyun says. “To get to know each other.”

“Don’t we already know each other?” Yeonjun says, and then there’s an awkward silence as they all remember that Beomgyu is still standing there with them.

Taehyun shrugs. “Not in all the ways that matter.”

None of them can argue with that. None of them really want to argue with Taehyun, either. Sometimes, Yeonjun still feels like the olive branch Taehyun has extended to him is something temporary, like tomorrow he’ll wake up and everyone will hate him again, and he’ll have to go back to pretending like fear is an acceptable substitute for love. 

They follow Taehyun to their usual ramyeon place and squeeze into a four person booth. It’s a challenge, what with there being five of them, and the fact that they’re all most definitely bigger than the average person. Yeonjun ends up pressed up against Soobin on one side of the booth, with Taehyun perched on the end of the bench, and Kai and Beomgyu sitting opposite them. Yeonjun can feel the warmth of Soobin’s body pressed up against his, shoulder to knee, and it makes it hard to focus on his food. He wonders if Taehyun did this on purpose. 

Then Soobin turns and meets his gaze while Yeonjun is sneaking a quick look at him, and he smiles at him, that smile that makes Yeonjun feel like he and Soobin are the only people in the entire world, the one that makes his dimples appear and his eyes go all puffy, and suddenly all he can focus on is his food, because if he keeps thinking about Soobin and his smile he might do something stupid like pull him down for a kiss. 

“So,” Taehyun says, breaking the silence. At least the silence isn’t an awkward one, this time - just five growing boys fully focused on shoveling food into their mouths. “How old are you, Beomgyu-ssi?”

“Um, I was born in ‘01,” Beomgyu replies, so quiet that Yeonjun can barely hear him over the hustle and bustle of the restaurant. “March.”

“Can I call you hyung, then?” Kai pipes up, and Beomgyu looks over at him with a strange sort of smile, one that looks a bit like an accident. Kai’s very good at breaking down people’s walls like that.

“Yeah, sure,” Beomgyu says.

“Where are you from?” It’s Soobin speaking this time. Yeonjun fights down an irrational spike of jealousy. Soobin wanting to know more about this guy they’ll be spending every waking moment with from now on is perfectly natural. It doesn’t matter that Soobin never asked Yeonjun where he ’s from. 

“Daegu,” Beomgyu answers. Yeonjun’s eyes widen a little in surprise. That’s a long way. He wonders if Beomgyu has any friends in Seoul.

“Were you a trainee in another company before this?” he asks. It’s the only reason he can think of that Beomgyu would be selected for the debut group so quickly. BigHit must have stolen him away from another, smaller company. 

But Beomgyu shakes his head no. “I never really wanted to be an idol, actually. I was in a band, back in Daegu. I play guitar. But BigHit contacted me saying they’d put me straight in the debut group if I joined, and that seemed like the sort of offer I couldn’t refuse.”

Yeonjun frowns. The monster in his chest is waking up again, for real this time. He’s been in the company for three years now. He’s been fighting, tooth and nail, every single day since he joined. The lack of sleep, the lightheadedness from all the skipped meals, the blisters and sore throats from countless hours of practice. And for what?. Yeonjun is going to debut, yes, but everything he’s been slowly killing himself for these past three years has been handed to this boy from Daegu on a silver platter, and it leaves a bitter taste in his mouth. 

The conversation continues around the table, Soobin and Taehyun and Kai asking Beomgyu all sorts of questions about his life in Daegu, his friends and family, his band, his interests. Beomgyu opens up slowly, blooming like a flower. He’s pretty, on top of everything else, ridiculously pretty, with the sort of face a woman would be jealous of. Yeonjun can’t bring himself to participate. 

“Excuse me,” he mumbles after a few minutes of this, getting Soobin and Taehyun to move so he can shuffle out of the booth and head to the bathroom. He can feel their concerned gazes on him, but he can’t look at them, because if he does he might start crying. 

His noodles end up in the toilet. He flushes, rinses his mouth out in the sink, wipes the tear tracks off his face. It’s probably for the better, anyway. He can’t afford to slip. Falls start with slips. The trainee diet, and the trainee practice schedule, that’s what got him here. It doesn’t matter that Beomgyu got here without all that.

He walks up to the counter and pays for all their meals, because he’s not really an asshole even if Soobin thinks (thought?) he is, and then he walks out without going back to their table. The acrid taste of vomit lingers in his mouth. He needs to go back to the dorm and brush his teeth, and after that he needs to sleep, so he can ignore the heavy weight in his stomach and the pressure weighing his chest down for a few hours. 

The monster keeps expanding in his chest. He can feel it pushing down on his organs. When he gets back to the dorms, he throws up again, alone in the cramped bathroom. There’s nothing left in his stomach, so it’s just bile, burning on the way up. Everything hurts. He leans his forehead against the cool porcelain of the toilet bowl, and embraces it. 

-

vii

A monster is not such a terrible thing to be. To be a monster is to be a hybrid signal, a lighthouse: both shelter and warning at once. 

 

A couple of days later, they’re told they’ll be moving dorms. Their own dorm, just the five of them. Yeonjun should be excited - it’ll be nice, to have a little more space, a slightly cleaner bathroom. But all he can muster up is dread, and a vague sense of impending doom. 

He’s been avoiding the other boys, as much as possible, which isn’t saying much, really. He’s still had to put up with Taehyun’s glares, and Soobin's concerned frowns, and Kai’s confused, slightly hurt glances. 

As for Beomgyu, whenever he ends up in Yeonjun’s vicinity, he just looks a little scared. Yeonjun’s observant, because you have to be in this world. He notices the way Beomgyu makes himself smaller when he’s around, hunching his shoulders and tucking his chin. It reminds him of the way the new trainees would react when he dragged them in front of the rankings board. It’s been a while since he last did that, he realizes. Months. He kind of wants to do it again, to Beomgyu, except it’s pointless now because they’re debuting, they won’t be on the board with the rest of the trainees anymore, and Beomgyu’s above the rankings anyway. Beomgyu’s above number 1, above Choi Yeonjun, Choi Yeonjun, Choi Yeonjun. Beomgyu’s better. 

So they move into their new dorm, and Yeonjun unpacks his stuff in their shared bedroom in silence and marvels at how the last three years of his life fit into a tiny suitcase and a tiny bunk bed, and it all gathers in the hollow of his throat and threatens to suffocate him. So he walks out into their tiny shared living room and watches Soobin puttering about their even tinier kitchen and stands there in silence because he’s not quite sure what to say or where to go. 

Taehyun emerges from the bathroom and walks up to Soobin and starts helping him, putting away the groceries they’d bought, and then Kai and Beomgyu come out of the bedroom where they’d been unpacking their stuff, too, except they’d actually had stuff to unpack, and they sit on the sofa together and Yeonjun stays there, standing in the center of the room, wondering whether he’s even real. Maybe he’s just a ghost now and he’s here haunting them because he doesn’t know what else to do. Has never known what else to do. 

He stands there and feels the world spinning around him. Soobin is standing right there and he wants to look and he wants to go to him but he can’t, he’s not a compass anymore because he’s become magnetic north, and he stays still while everything keeps moving around him. It feels strangely like being left behind. 

His chest throbs with that too full too empty feeling. He closes his eyes and it’s as if he doesn’t exist. Quietly, he walks to the door and slips out of the apartment. It feels like no one notices.

It’s not quite dark outside yet, twilight still falling on the city. The air is sticky and humid, fuzzy and electric with the oncoming storm. Yeonjun takes a deep breath. It feels like it does more harm than good, like all it’s doing is making more room for the monster. It buzzes with energy, stirring and stretching and reaching up towards the dark clouds above. Yeonjun can feel it in his throat and it makes him want to gag.

He walks down to the street corner, where a tiny park sits, nestled between two buildings. It’s closed, at this time of night, but Yeonjun just jumps the gate. It’s not like anyone’s going to come looking. There’s a playground, a little rusty but in mostly decent condition, sheltered from the oppressive sky by a couple of old, gnarly trees. Yeonjun sits on a bench under one of them and draws his knees up to his chest. His mind feels too empty yet too full, just like his chest, buzzing with thoughts that won’t settle, black and white like TV static. 

It feels like if he keeps all of this inside any longer he’ll burst. But he doesn’t have anyone to share this with, all these ugly parts of himself that he’s ashamed of. And besides, he doesn’t think he can put his feelings into words anyway. He wonders if there’ll be anything left of him to find when he finally explodes. 

The rain starts to fall, cold heavy drops that rustle through the tree’s branches before they hit Yeonjun. He doesn’t move. He feels like he’s floating outside of his body again. He’s numb to the cold. 

Distantly, he wonders what he’s done with his phone, then he remembers that he’d left it in the dorm with the rest of his stuff when he’d finished unpacking. He wants to reach inside himself like a suitcase and unpack all his organs onto the gravel in front of him. He closes his eyes and imagines the rain washing away the darkness coating them, the black stain that consumes him. He imagines it cleaning him from the inside out. He thinks about holding his heart between his cold hands, feeling the weight of it, squeezing it and wringing it out like a wet rag until it’s empty and purified and the monster drips sticky black blood onto the floor and decomposes. 

He opens his eyes and the sky is dark all of a sudden. He wonders what time it is, and whether he should head home. Home . That’s a stupid word to use. It can’t be home if there’s no one waiting for him there. He unfolds himself, slowly, lowering his feet back to the ground. His limbs feel stiff, wooden. He raises a hand to his lips. All he feels is cold, and he’s not sure whether it’s his fingers or his lips that feel frozen, or both. He stands up, and he feels like he’s underwater. The rain is still falling, but he can barely feel it. Maybe he should head back. 

He’s not sure how he makes it back to the dorm. His vision feels weird, kind of blurry. He follows the streetlights, in a sort of trance. Suddenly he’s standing at the front door. He doesn’t remember how he got there. He raises a hand towards the doorknob, then hesitates. He doesn’t have his keys. He wonders if they’ve locked the door, if they’ve already forgotten he exists. He certainly feels intangible enough that his absence would be enough to erase his existence.

He’s not sure how long he stands there, outside the apartment, dripping. When he finally reaches out and grasps the doorknob it feels warm against his cold palm. He steps into the dorm and his vision is suddenly flooded with warm orange light. He wonders if this is what it feels like to burn. 

There are two figures waiting for him on the sofa. He blinks a few times until his vision clears, and Taehyun and Soobin’s faces emerge from the blur. He watches their scowls melt into expressions of urgent concern.

“Yeonjun, where have you been? What the fuck, have you been outside in the rain this whole time? What were you thinking?”

He sees Taehyun’s mouth moving, but it feels like the words are coming from somewhere else. He remembers dunking his head under the water in the bath as a boy, remembers the strange, distant quality his mother’s voice took on when his ears were submerged. That’s what Taehyun sounds like, now. 

“I think I need a bath,” he says, because that’s all he can think to say. 

Taehyun and Soobin look at each other, frowning. Yeonjun just walks past them, into the bathroom. It’s small, and the white tiles of the floor shine, and Yeonjun’s wet clothes make a disgusting wet slapping sound when he drops them onto it. The tub fills with hot water and the room fills with steam. Yeonjun looks at himself in the mirror. His lips are a strange shade of purplish-blue. 

He steps into the warm water, sits and sinks into it until his whole head is underwater. It feels right, to be like this. He feels cut off from the rest of the world, in body as well as in mind.

He lifts his head out of the water and the bathroom air feels cold on his face. There are voices outside the door, and if he concentrates he can make out what they’re saying. His head doesn’t feel quite so fuzzy anymore.

“We should call an ambulance,” one of the voices says. Soobin, Yeonjun thinks. It takes him a couple seconds to recognize it.

“I really don’t think we need to,” Taehyun says. “He’s an idiot, but he was alert and walking and now he’s warming himself up. He’ll be fine.”

“How do you even know that?” Soobin hisses, and Yeonjun can hear the scowl in his voice. “Why would he even stay out in the rain that long in the first place? How do you know he’s not just… finishing the job in there?”

Taehyun stays silent. Yeonjun’s brain slowly catches up with the conversation. Does Soobin think he was trying to kill himself? 

“Fuck this,” he says, and Yeonjun is almost shocked to hear him swear. “I’m going in there to check on him.”

A beat later, the door swings open. Soobin storms into the room, sinks down onto the tile floor next to the tub and dips his hand into the water. His frown melts into something more relieved. 

“It’s warm,” he calls out to Taehyun, who’s poking his head in through the door. 

“I told you so,” Taehyun says. Yeonjun wants to say that he didn’t, actually, but getting the words out is too much effort. He stays quiet. 

Soobin turns back to him, reaches out to grab Yeonjun’s jaw, tilts his head up so their eyes meet. His eyes are unusually intense, dark like tar, dark like the dirty stain in Yeonjun’s chest. 

“Hyung,” he says, soft but dangerous, like silk stretched out over steel. “You weren’t trying to hurt yourself out there, were you?”

Yeonjun shakes his head no, and is almost surprised by the truthfulness of his answer. Because it is true. He doesn’t want to die. He wants to live, just not like this. “I just didn’t feel the cold,” he answers, and it sounds too simple to be true, but it is. Soobin frowns, stares at him, another breath in, another breath out. The air in the bathroom is starting to feel warmer. Distantly, Yeonjun starts to realize he should be feeling weird about being naked in front of Soobin. 

“Fine, I believe you,” Soobin says, at last. “But don’t do that again. Please. Promise.” Yeonjun nods even though he’s not quite sure what he’s promising. He’s not sure it’s a promise he can keep. 

Another moment passes. Spirals of steam float up towards the ceiling, and Soobin stands up and walks out of the room. He shuts the door behind him carefully, and suddenly it’s as if he was never there. Yeonjun starts to think he might have imagined his presence. For a second, it had almost seemed as if Soobin truly cared. But that just doesn’t make sense. 

-

viii

What I have wanted most is many lives. One for each longing, round and separate. 

 

Yeonjun wakes up the next morning with a sore throat and a painful, chesty cough. Taehyun takes one look at him and immediately declares that he’s to be confined to his bed for the rest of the day. 

“If you leave this room for anything more than to go piss, I’ll kill you myself,” he says, and it sounds like a promise. Yeonjun nods, and collapses back into his bed. He feels like he’s been hit by a truck, but he supposes that’s what you get when you sit outside in the rain all night. He dozes, slipping in and out of a restless, dreamless sleep, occasionally roused by voices in the living room, before sleep pulls him back into her warm, motherly arms. 

The next thing he’s fully aware of is Taehyun stepping into the room again, shaking his shoulder gently to wake him up. “Hey, we’re off to practice,” he whispers. “Soobin volunteered to stay behind and take care of you. Don’t worry about the company, we’ll deal with them.”

Yeonjun wants to jump out of bed, to protest, to show Taehyun he can go to practice with them, because being selected to debut isn’t the same thing as actually debuting and he can’t afford to start skipping practice just yet, but the moment he tries to move his body seizes with agony. He winces, and Taehyun raises an eyebrow. 

“You’re going to stay here, and Soobin-hyung’s going to talk to you, and you’re going to listen.” His voice is a little firmer, a little louder this time. Yeonjun feels cowed. “Seriously, hyung,” Taehyun says, eyes softening, “we’re here for you. I wish you could see that too.”

Yeonjun closes his eyes against the burn of tears. He’s not quite sure what to believe, but he does know that he doesn’t feel like being tortured with the impossible promise of love and friendship today. He hears Taehyun sigh and slip out of the room, and then he hears voices in the living room, then the front door opening and closing, then silence. For a moment, he wonders if Taehyun was lying, if he’s actually alone in the dorm right now. Then he hears the bedroom door opening and closing again. 

There’s a beat of silence, just the sound of their breathing in the stillness of the room, then Soobin is moving to sit on the edge of Yeonjun’s bed. Yeonjun’s eyes flutter open despite himself. Everything hurts, and he wants it to stop, and the certainty that one look at Soobin’s face will soothe some of the pain sits heavy in the hollow of his belly, tugging at his bruised heart. 

Soobin is looking down at him with an emotion in his eyes that Yeonjun has never seen there before. It makes them look bigger than usual, soft, liquid, like it would be so easy to fall into them and drown. He thinks it might be pity, but then Soobin reaches out and brushes his sweaty hair off his forehead and his pretty mouth twists up with concern when he feels the heat radiating off Yeonjun’s skin, and then he thinks it might be fondness, but he must be delirious, because that’s just not possible. Soobin is spring, Yeonjun reminds himself, and Yeonjun is cold and dark and salt water and everything inside him is dead. 

“Hyung,” Soobin says, quiet and a little sad, “do you need anything?”

Yeonjun shakes his head and rolls over in his bed, turning his back to Soobin. 

“Hyung,” Soobin says again, and he sounds annoyed this time. “Don’t be childish. You know you need to talk to one of us. If you really don’t want that to be me, that’s fine, just tell me. But you really worried us last night.” 

“I told you,” Yeonjun mumbles into the pillow, “I just lost track of time. Couldn’t feel the cold.”

He can’t see him, but he already knows Soobin is frowning. 

“That’s not normal either,” he murmurs. Yeonjun scoffs.

“None of us are normal, or sane, or whatever the fuck you’re going to say next. We wouldn’t be here if we were.”

Soobin laughs, mirthless and empty. “So when can you bring back the Yeonjun-hyung who isn’t an asshole for no reason?”

Yeonjun stays silent and tries very hard not to cry into his pillow. He hears Soobin sigh, feels him relax into the mattress, the tension draining from his body. “I’m sorry, that wasn’t fair,” he murmurs.

Yeonjun shrugs. “I think it was. I just don’t know how to bring back the Yeonjun you like. I’m not sure he’s even real.” His voice is hoarse and raspy, and speaking hurts, but he forces the words out anyway. The tiny rational part of his brain that hasn’t been overwhelmed by the fever and years of accumulated fatigue tries to tell him that he probably shouldn’t be so candid with Soobin. It’s very easy to ignore. 

“That Yeonjun is you, and you’re him. You shouldn’t think of yourself as different people, different versions. All of the different pieces of you can’t exist independently. They’re part of you, even when you don’t feel like they are. Even when you don’t want them to be.”

Yeonjun frowns. “You’re the one who started talking like that.” Silence. Yeonjun sighs. “I’m sorry, I’m being childish. Again.”

“You’re going through a lot, hyung,” Soobin says, reaching out to touch his shoulder through the blanket. “But we’re here. Let us carry some of that burden for you.” 

Yeonjun doesn’t like how transparent Soobin makes him feel. It makes him want to rebuild his walls twice as high, shut everyone off and live in his little walled garden forever. But it also makes him want to crack open his ribcage and bare everything inside to Soobin. 

“It’s not… there’s nothing to carry,” Yeonjun hiccups, and the tears really are falling now, and it’s embarrassing, even more embarrassing than being naked in the bath in front of Soobin the night before. “This is just who I am, Soobin. I don’t think you can fix me.”

There’s a beat of silence, and then Soobin is reaching over Yeonjun and wrapping an arm around his middle, warm and solid and real , and tugging until Yeonjun is forced to roll onto his back. Soobin leans over him, those dark eyes drawing him in, and he has to close his eyes because he doesn’t think he can look at him like this and not fall in love. Hot tears spill down his cheeks. 

“It’s not about fixing you, hyung, there’s nothing to fix, you’re not broken. Open your eyes, come on,” Soobin says, and Yeonjun can only obey. “I just want you to be happy, and you’re not happy right now, but you can change that, we can change that. So talk to me, hyung. I want to help you, but I can’t help you if you don’t help me .”

Yeonjun sighs and throws his arm over his face to hide his red-rimmed eyes. 

“I don’t even know where to start.” 

“From the beginning,” Soobin shrugs, like it’s the most obvious thing in the world, and maybe it really is. 

So Yeonjun starts from the beginning. He tells Soobin a story that starts with ambition, cold and clear and knocking everything down along its way like a torrent swollen with snowmelt crashing down a mountainside. He tells Soobin about the monster that grew from there, the darkness expanding in his chest, the fear and the self-hatred and the need , all consuming and painful, to be the best, and the agonizing certainty that he never would be. He tells Soobin about crying in practice rooms and floating outside of himself and the cold porcelain of toilet bowls and the searing pain in his muscles from overuse. He tells Soobin a story that ends in success, and he should be happy but instead he feels hollow, it feels hollow, tainted and unearned. He strips himself bare and Soobin sits and listens. 

When he finally stops talking he feels raw and exposed and his chest feels airy like someone has cracked it open and forgotten to sew it back up. He looks at Soobin’s hands and is almost surprised to see that they’re not bloody.

Soobin is silent for a while. The silence starts to feel oppressive, and Yeonjun speaks up because he’s afraid if he doesn’t it might suffocate him. 

“I’m sorry. I know that was a lot.”

“Don’t apologize,” Soobin replies, reaching down to grasp one of Yeonjun’s hands in both of his. “It was, but that’s not a bad thing. I was just processing.”

Yeonjun nods, still a little uncomfortable. 

“I think you need to be kinder to yourself, hyung,” Soobin continues, and Yeonjun can’t resist the urge to raise an eyebrow. Soobin blushes, looking a little flustered. “I know that sounds stupid and… and cliché, but it’s true. You don’t have to be the best all the time to still be good, more than good enough. But it’s normal to feel upset when you don’t do as well as you want to, or as well as you expect you to. And having negative thoughts and feelings about that doesn’t make you a bad person, Yeonjun-hyung.”

Yeonjun just shrugs, because if he opens his mouth to respond he might just start crying. 

“I think…” Soobin pauses for a moment. His palms feel a little sweaty. He’s obviously choosing his words carefully. “I think that you’ve convinced yourself that you’re a bad person, when you’re really not. And I know I probably haven’t helped with that. I’m sorry,” he says, wincing, and Yeonjun squeezes his hand to reassure him. “I think you’ve been alone for too long, and you’ve kept everything to yourself. But when you keep nasty things locked up for too long, that’s when they fester. You need to let yourself breathe.”

Yeonjun closes his eyes and feels tears spill again, following already traced tracks down his cheeks. 

“I know it’s hard, to show all the ugly pieces of yourself to other people, but you have trust that they’ll stick around. Like you did for me, after you found me in that practice room.”

Yeonjun isn’t sure how to tell Soobin that no part of him could ever be ugly, so he doesn’t say anything. 

“The people who love you don’t just love the parts of you that you think are loveable, Yeonjun-hyung. They love all the parts of you, even if you think they’re not deserving of love,” Soobin says, and Yeonjun wants to ask him if he loves Yeonjun, if he loves Yeonjun and all his ugly parts - wants it so badly that he aches with it. 

“We love you, hyung,” Soobin says, soft and gentle, and Yeonjun’s heart soars. “Me and Taehyun and Hyuka. And I’m sure Beomgyu will, too, if you let him.”

Yeonjun sniffles, wipes at his tears, nods. Soobin smiles down at him. “We might not be yet, but we’re going to be a family, you know. We have to be, if this is going to work. And it will.”

Yeonjun’s not sure how to feel about that - family . He wants more than that from Soobin. He wants him so badly it scares him sometimes. He wants to lie with him under the covers at night and press his body close to him until it merges and melts and fuses into his, until Yeonjun only exists inside Soobin, until his heart and lungs and blood are no longer his own. 

Instead he smiles and says “Okay,” a little watery, a little too loud for the silence of the room. 

“Just. Trust us, okay?” Soobin says, and Yeonjun nods, because he really does want to try. Soobin’s dimples return, and then he’s standing up, and Yeonjun already mourns the loss of his body against his through the covers. 

“Good. I’m gonna go get you some soup, okay? Unless you wanna sleep some more?” 

Yeonjun shakes his head. “Soup sounds good,” he says. 

Soobin leaves the room, and Yeonjun is left alone with his thoughts. It’s not as scary as it usually is. He feels strangely empty, but in a good way. He feels light, and clean, if a little drained, like a wet rag being wrung out, and he wonders if this is what it feels like to be reborn.

-

ix

I wait every year for summer, and it is usually good, but it is never as good as that summer I am always waiting for. 

 

Beomgyu is hilarious, Yeonjun realizes, when he gets comfortable with you. He’s also deeply, deeply caring, and it makes Yeonjun feel even worse about the way he’d treated him. But he really does want to try, so when his fever finally breaks and his throat stops feeling like he’s swallowed a handful of razor blades he gets Beomgyu alone and sits him down and apologizes to him. It’s awful and messy and it comes out all wrong but Beomgyu still smiles up at him with unfiltered relief in his big, shiny eyes and tells him he’s just glad he’s feeling better. Yeonjun wonders, briefly, whether Beomgyu could be an angel, because he seems too nice , too unquestioningly and unconditionally kind, to be human. 

Angel or not, Beomgyu is here, and so are Taehyun and Soobin and Kai, and Yeonjun feels a little less alone with every day that passes. They all take turns bringing him tea with honey while his throat heals, and when the weather starts warming up and he finally feels well enough to go back to practice he takes them all out and treats them to ice cream. 

Afterwards they walk to the park where Yeonjun had sat that day in the rain and sit on the very same bench, all squished together because it really isn’t made for five people, especially not five people their size. They sit in the dappled sunlight under the tree and Yeonjun looks down at the gravel where he had pictured all the parts of himself laid out so vividly, so intimately, and he smiles, a small, private thing just for himself. They’re warm and their fingers are sticky with melted ice cream and they’re together and they’re happy . Yeonjun’s chest floods and fills with light instead of darkness and it spills out through his ribs and onto his skin. Soobin reaches down and takes one of Yeonjun’s hands in his. His skin is warm and tacky with sugar and Yeonjun can practically taste it on his tongue.

“Isn’t this nice, hyung?” he says with a smile and Yeonjun can only nod, because yes, it is nice. Some days he still feels like he doesn’t deserve this, doesn’t deserve to be this happy, but then Soobin smiles at him with those dimples and if Soobin thinks he’s worthy of those smiles then surely Yeonjun must be deserving of happiness. 

When the sun starts going down they head back to the dorm and pile onto the sofa in the warm amber light of the living room and watch a movie together. Yeonjun ends up next Soobin again, and it’s so easy to melt into his warmth. He feels solid and strong against him. He feels like he could catch Yeonjun if he fell. If he let himself fall. 

Yeonjun falls asleep before the movie ends, head pillowed on Soobin’s shoulder, and the younger just lets him. He waits until the others have all left the room to wake him up. Yeonjun wakes to a gentle hand shaking his shoulder. Someone has turned the lights off, and when his eyes finally flutter open, it takes them a moment to adjust to the dim light of the TV screen, paused on the credits. Soobin looks ethereal, almost otherworldly in its silvery glow. 

“Pretty,” Yeonjun mumbles, still half-asleep, and his brain doesn’t catch up until half a second later, when Soobin blushes so brightly that even the black and white tones of the TV screen lighting can’t hide it. When he realizes what he’s said, Yeonjun blushes as well, and looks down at the floor. 

Soobin clears his throat. “Come on, hyung,” he whispers, “let’s get to bed.” Yeonjun lets Soobin drag him up from the couch. They pause like that, for a second, Soobin’s arms around Yeonjun, holding him upright. Yeonjun rests his forehead against Soobin’s shoulder. There’s something about it, the dim light from the TV, the silence, the way his brain is still a little fuzzy - it feels like a dream. It feels safe and cozy. It feels like time has stopped, just for them. Yeonjun opens his mouth, not entirely sure of what he’s going to say but certain that he wants to say it, that he wants to tell Soobin how beautiful he is, how much he means to him, but then Soobin shifts against him, takes a step back, and the moment is broken. 

Yeonjun tries to hide his disappointment as he pulls away, too. He’s not sure he does a very good job. 

They brush their teeth, squished together in the tiny bathroom. Yeonjun keeps his eyes fixed on himself in the mirror, focuses on the minty, icy sting of the toothpaste on the cuts in his mouth where he’s been chewing at the skin on the inside of his cheeks. Everything about this feels dangerously domestic. It would be so easy to reach out for Soobin with his free hand, to hold his, to tangle their fingers together, to pull him closer and drop a messy, minty kiss on the soft skin of his cheek. 

Instead he spits into the sink and rinses his mouth out and walks out of the bathroom in silence, leaving Soobin to finish up alone. Coward , whispers that little voice in the back of his mind that sounds strangely like Taehyun, as Yeonjun slips into bed. He scowls at the bottom of the bunk above his, where he knows Beomgyu is sleeping peacefully. He may be a coward, but acting on his feelings for Soobin would make him selfish, and that’s worse, he thinks. He can’t put their career at risk like that before they’ve even debuted. There’s no room for love in this world, he knows, or at least not for the kind of love he feels for Soobin. 

The bedroom door creaks open, and Soobin pads into the room. The orange glow of the streetlamps outside floods into the room through the cracks in the blinds, falls across Soobin’s face, and he looks so warm like this, soft and comfortable in his pajamas, so approachable and so distant all at once, both godlike and painfully human simultaneously. He looks like home. Yeonjun closes his eyes and rolls over in bed, pressing his face into the pillow. It hurts to look at Soobin for too long, like staring straight into the sun, like if he stares long enough he’ll end up blind, and all he’ll ever be able to see, for the rest of his life, is Soobin’s likeness, burned into his retinas, branded on the inside of his eyelids. The worst part is that he probably wouldn’t mind. 

-

x

What is older than desire? the bare tree asked. Sorrow, said the sky. Sorrow is a river older than desire.

 

Soon the days start getting longer and an oppressive, muggy heat descends on the city, and it feels like the hotter it gets, the harder they’re expected to train. They’re progressing well, though - their teachers aren’t exactly generous with praise, but Yeonjun can see for himself how quickly the other boys are improving. Taehyun’s voice is getting stronger and more stable by the day, and Kai is improving just as fast, if not even faster. Kai is also getting bigger and taller, growing into himself. It won’t be long now until he’s even taller than Yeonjun. Yeonjun wonders if he’ll be as tall as Soobin, or maybe even taller than that. Some days it seems like Kai will never stop growing, not until he’s towering over all of them. Maknae on top, indeed , Yeonjun thinks wryly.

As for Beomgyu, he’s a natural, and Yeonjun finds it almost funny that he’d never really wanted to be an idol, when it’s so obvious that he was born to be one. He’s not a dancer, but he picks it up so fast, sharp lines and precise movements, flowing to the music like it’s a part of him. Of course, he’s still a beginner in a lot of ways, lacking the technical foundation that comes with years of practice, but Yeonjun is happy to teach him everything he needs to know, and Beomgyu progresses lightning fast under his mentorship. It makes Yeonjun feel good, too, and he’s surprised to find that he doesn’t feel even the slightest hint of jealousy when Beomgyu perfects a move that even Yeonjun has been struggling with - instead, he simply feels proud. 

And Soobin - well. Sometimes, Yeonjun catches a glimpse of him in the mirror when they’re dancing, and is taken aback by how much he’s changed. There’s barely a trace of that shy, withdrawn boy that Yeonjun had first met, almost a year ago now, that boy who had been so ready to hate him. He’s grown into his body, now - he stands straight and tall and confident, and Yeonjun often finds himself admiring the long lines and soft curves of him, and thinking about how well he’d fit against his own sharp angles.

He’s a better dancer now, too, and sometimes Yeonjun wants to tell him that he’d seen something in him from the beginning, that he’d known , with an unshakeable certainty, that Soobin would make it. He’s not as much of a natural as Beomgyu, not quite as clean, but he dances with a sort of effortless grace and elegance that even Yeonjun can’t always manage. 

He’s more settled, as well. There’s not quite so much anger in him, these days, not so much of that boy whose voice had dripped with bitterness as he’d called Yeonjun an asshole with an oversized ego , lounging around empty practice rooms at night. He’s still quieter, slightly more reserved than the rest of them, but he radiates a subtle sort of confidence. He’s a reassuring presence in their little group, the kind of person they all know they can go to with their problems, someone who’ll always be ready to offer them a hug and a shoulder to cry on. Yeonjun thinks they would probably have fallen apart a long time ago, without Soobin. 

That’s why, in retrospect, none of this should have been surprising in the slightest. But when the company tells them that they need to choose a leader, it comes as a bit of a shock to Yeonjun. He’d mainly just… forgotten that that was a thing that needed to happen. Not long after they’d been selected to debut, they’d been told that they weren’t going to have official positions within the group, and that they’d all have to train everything equally hard. Yeonjun had just assumed that no positions meant no leader, but he supposes it does make sense to have one. Someone who can speak for the group, someone to be responsible for them, someone to keep the peace. 

And yes, in retrospect, Yeonjun had been stupid for assuming that he could be that person. But he also hadn’t really been thinking rationally about it. He’s the oldest, he’s the one that’s been here the longest, the one who’s been training the longest. The one who’s worked the hardest. And he’s worked on himself, he really has, he’s gotten better at accepting that he can’t be perfect, at not letting setbacks break him down completely, at listening to others, at being a good hyung. So shouldn’t he be the leader?

And, well, truthfully he knows that among them, he’s definitely not the best suited for the role. That’s why he writes Soobin’s name, when they’re asked to write down their choice for leader anonymously on a little piece of paper. Because he knows, factually, that Soobin is the best choice. But a large part of him, the part that’s still a little twisted and gnarled from being mired in darkness for so long, thinks that that shouldn’t matter. He’s the oldest, he’s worked the hardest.

A staff member gathers them in a room, and says that there are four votes for Soobin, and one for Yeonjun, and that the company approves of their choice. Soobin’s eyes go wide with surprise, like he really hadn’t expected to be chosen. Something dark and ugly curls in Yeonjun’s gut. Soobin’s eyes meet his, and he smiles, but he knows it looks forced, knows it looks fake. 

“Congratulations, Soobin-ah,” he says, standing. He brings a hand down on his shoulder, a little too rough and a little too careful all at once, and then he’s walking out, because he doesn’t want to ruin this moment for Soobin but he knows he already has. 

He finds himself in a bathroom again, locked in a stall, leaning over the toilet as his stomach churns. He laughs at himself, quiet and scornful, and it echoes around the empty room. It’s funny, how he always finds himself here, in the end. How it always circles back to this. Polished white tiles and the smell of disinfectant stinging his nose. Puking his guts out in the toilet like even they can’t stand to be inside him anymore. 

He imagines those same polished white tiles spattered with his blood, his body turning itself inside out in this tiny bathroom stall. He imagines Soobin walking in and finding him like that, seeing all the ugly pieces of him, all the nastiness inside, laid out in plain sight. He wonders if that would convince him that Yeonjun really isn’t made to be loved. 

He leans over that toilet bowl for what feels like hours. His stomach refuses to settle, but he can’t get anything out. Tears of frustration drip down his cheeks and onto the ceramic bowl and the tile floor. The door creaks open. 

Yeonjun freezes up. His muscles tense, adrenaline rushing through him, and his stomach protests.

“Yeonjun-hyung?” a voice echoes. It bounces off the polished tile and then it bounces around inside Yeonjun’s skull. Soobin. 

“You should leave, Soobin-ah,” he says. His voice comes out surprisingly stable, if a little thick.

“Please come out, hyung. I want to talk to you.”

Yeonjun is silent, staring down at the shiny white porcelain and the light that reflects off it and the still water at the bottom. 

“Please,” Soobin tries again. “You promised.”

Yeonjun feels, not for the first time, like Soobin has reached into his chest and stolen his heart from the cradle of his lungs. Like a puppet suspended by his own heartstrings, he turns, unlocks the door, and steps out of the stall. Soobin is standing in front of him, concern etched into every line of his face.

“You shouldn’t be here,” Yeonjun murmurs, looking down at his feet. “You should be celebrating.”

Soobin scowls. “I don’t want to celebrate without you. You should know that.”

Yeonjun keeps his head bowed, and says nothing. 

“Hyung,” Soobin starts - pauses, hesitates. “You voted for me, didn’t you?”

Yeonjun nods. There’s no point in hiding it. Besides, he wants Soobin to know.

“I voted for you,” Soobin says, and even though Yeonjun already kind of knew, because there was no way Soobin would have voted for himself, the revelation still lodges itself in his ribcage like a knife. When Soobin continues, it’s like he’s twisting the blade. “I don’t understand why everyone chose me. You were the obvious choice. You’re right to be upset.”

Yeonjun frowns. “Shut up,” he says. It comes out harsh, way too harsh. He’s definitely not in the right mindset to be having this conversation, emotions far too raw and too close to the surface, but he supposes he doesn’t have much of a choice. “Stop talking about yourself like that, Soobin-ah. I chose you because you’ll be the best leader, and that’s why the others chose you, too. I… still have shit to work through, obviously. But that doesn’t mean I don’t think you should be our leader.” 

“Hyung…” Soobin says, and his voice sounds watery. Yeonjun’s head snaps up. Sure enough, there are tears brimming in Soobin’s eyes. Before his mind can catch up with his body, he’s stepping forward and pulling Soobin into a hug. 

“You deserve this, Soobin-ah, I promise,” Yeonjun murmurs into Soobin’s shoulder. “You’re going to be so good. You’re going to be the best. And I’ll be beside you every step of the way. You can always lean on me.”

Soobin presses his face against the top of Yeonjun’s head, and Yeonjun can feel hot tears leaking into his hair. He rubs Soobin’s back soothingly. His stomach has settled now, and he feels… better, in some indescribable way, even though seeing Soobin cry makes something in his chest seize up tight and painful. Soobin in his arms, Soobin relying on him for comfort, looking to him for guidance - maybe that can be enough. Yeonjun doesn’t need to be the leader. Soobin has always been better than him at that sort of thing, anyway - he’s stable and reassuring in a way Yeonjun doesn’t think he can ever be. But Yeonjun can be for Soobin what Soobin is for them all. He can be his shoulder to cry on, his safe haven in the storm, his guiding light at sea, his hyung . And that can be enough. 

When Soobin finally pulls away from the hug, Yeonjun helps him dry his tears before they leave the bathroom. They head back to the dorm, and he wraps him up tight in a soft blanket and cuddles him on the couch until the younger boys get back, carrying bags full of Soobin’s favorite snacks. 

“I tried to sweet talk one of the managers into buying us alcohol, but he said no,” Beomgyu says, looking crestfallen, and Soobin giggles. Yeonjun hides his answering smile in the material of the blanket, but he doesn’t miss the look Taehyun shoots his way when he sits up to make room on the couch for the other boys. He ignores it. Instead he lets himself relax into the cushions as they all settle in for a movie, and he throws his arm around Soobin’s shoulders, and he lets himself pretend. 

-

xi

The continuous narrative of existence is a lie. There is no continuous narrative, there are lit-up moments, and the rest is dark.

 

The months fly by, after that, days and weeks blending into each other, the same routine repeated over and over. They pour everything they have into practice, into training, into getting better, because every day that goes by brings them closer to debut. Sometimes it feels like there’s no end in sight, as the months go by with no news from the company, no official announcements, no updates on their concept, on their music, no songs to record or choreographies to learn. The seasons bleed into each other, and there’s something almost dreamlike about this loop they’re trapped in. Yeonjun turns 19, and they celebrate together, but he’s never felt more uncertain about his life.

And then, one day, they’re called into a meeting room and told that the company will be announcing their debut soon. A boy group, 5 members, set to debut at the beginning of 2019. Before Yeonjun even has time to process that, they’re being told that their debut title track has been chosen, and their b-sides, and that they’re going to start recording soon, and that they need to start learning choreographies, and having photoshoots, and suddenly everything feels very, very real. It’s terrifying, and Yeonjun wants to get up and run away and never look back, but Soobin moves his hand until it’s brushing against Yeonjun’s and laces their pinkies together, and he’s still terrified, but he feels safer with Soobin by his side. 

Yeonjun thought they were busy before. Now he realizes that that was nothing, compared to what things are like these days. They barely have time to sit down and talk anymore, and he finds himself missing it, but he can’t bring himself to do anything about it. Their lives have turned into a blur of practice record practice some more eat sleep a few hours and then start all over again . He’s starting to feel a zombie, barely in control of his body anymore, but he can handle it. He can see the light at the end of the tunnel, the finish line, and he knows that crossing that finish line will make everything worth it. 

He shouldn’t be surprised, when it turns out that they can’t all handle it the way he can, but he is. 

They’d filmed their introduction clips that day. It had been fun, for Yeonjun - getting all dolled up, hair and makeup done carefully, and being in front of the camera. It’s far from his first time - they’d practiced this, too, as trainees. But it feels so much more real this time - it feels like everything Yeonjun has been reaching for his entire life is finally close enough to taste, sweet success on the tip of his tongue. So when Soobin comes to him at the end of the day, pulls him aside as they’re leaving the company building and holds him back while gesturing at the younger boys to head home without them, Yeonjun is strangely taken aback. 

“Hyung,” Soobin says, turning those dark eyes towards him, wide with fear and panic, and Yeonjun immediately grabs his hand and leads him back into the building, to the practice room that’s been reserved for them ever since their debut had been officially announced, where he knows no one will disturb them. 

He takes the time to shut the door carefully behind them, and then he’s turning around and gathering Soobin up into his arms, squeezing him tight as the younger boy finally lets himself break down. 

“It’s okay, I’m here, I’ve got you,” he murmurs, reaching up to stroke Soobin’s hair. He guides his head to rest in the crook of his neck and holds him there, safe and hidden from the outside world, until the violent sobs that wrack his body become less and less frequent and finally die out. 

“You wanna sit down?” Yeonjun asks, muffled where his lips are pressed against Soobin’s hair. Soobin nods, a feeble little thing, still hidden in Yeonjun’s neck. Yeonjun helps guide him down to the varnished wooden floor. Soobin isn’t helping much, and it’s a little awkward - Yeonjun ends up sitting with his back against the wall and Soobin draped over his lap, a little too big to fit there comfortably. 

They sit there in silence for a while, until Soobin finally lifts his head from Yeonjun’s shoulder and looks at him. 

“I’m sorry, hyung,” he sniffles, but Yeonjun shakes his head, cutting him off before he has time to start talking nonsense. 

“Don’t be,” he says. “I told you, I’m here for you. Whenever you need me.”

For some reason, that makes Soobin’s eyes fill with tears again. Yeonjun frowns, and lifts his hands to cup Soobin’s face so he can wipe them away the moment they spill over. 

“But I’m the leader, hyung. I can’t afford to be a burden,” he chokes out. 

“You’re not a burden, Soobin-ah,” Yeonjun says. “I’m here because I want to be. Because I love all the parts of you, even the ones that you don’t. Isn’t that what you said to me?” It feels a little too close to the truth, a little dangerous, but if it’s what Soobin needs to hear then he’ll say it. 

“Thank you, hyung,” Soobin sniffles. He pauses for a moment, composing himself. “I’m just… scared. So scared. And I don’t know what to do about it. I’m scared that I won’t be good enough. As an idol, as a leader… I’m scared that I’m going to ruin everything for you guys.”

“Soobinie… I understand why you’re scared. I used to feel that way all the time, you know. The fear of not being good enough, of never being good enough. I know what it feels like. But,” he trails off, brushing Soobin’s soft bangs out of his face, tracing the curve of his cheekbones with his thumbs, “I promise you that you are. You know, from the very beginning, I knew you’d debut, Soobin-ah. I saw something in you, for what it’s worth. You’re so talented, and you’re the best leader I’ve ever known, and you’re going to be fine, and everyone’s gonna love you, and we wouldn’t be here without you. How could you possibly ruin anything?”

Soobin is silent for a moment, looking down at his hands, fidgeting with his fingers. Then he looks up, uncharacteristically solemn. “By being selfish, hyung,” he whispers. His eyes find Yeonjun’s, and neither of them look away. There’s something in Soobin’s eyes, something he doesn’t think he’s ever seen in them before, something he doesn’t recognize. 

He frowns. The room feels smaller all of a sudden, the air thicker, like the whole world has been compressed into this one moment, the two of them tangled together on the practice room floor late at night. “What do you mean, Soobin-ah?” he asks, and he’s almost surprised to find himself whispering too, instinctively matching Soobin’s volume, meeting him at every turn. 

Soobin’s eyes flutter shut, and he takes a deep breath, like he’s steeling himself for something. Then his eyes open, and they’re dark and bottomless and sharp like obsidian. “I’m selfish, hyung,” he says. “I want things that I shouldn’t.” His eyes flicker down to Yeonjun’s lips - half a second, no more, but it’s enough for Yeonjun’s heart to start racing in his chest. He briefly considers pinching himself, just to make sure he’s not dreaming. 

“Soobin,” he breathes. His left hand is shaking slightly, a gentle tremor that has his thumb rubbing back and forth against the skin of Soobin’s cheek. “What do you want? I need you to say it. Tell me, please.”

Soobin leans further into Yeonjun’s touch, like he’s giving himself up to him. “I’m selfish because I love you, hyung. I want to love you, and I want you to love me back, and I’m selfish because I know it could ruin us, but I want it anyway.”

Yeonjun feels like he’s floating, like his heart is beating out of his chest, like he could spread his wings and fly. “If that makes you selfish, then what does it make me, Soobin-ah?”

Soobin’s eyes widen, a little confused, a little hopeful. 

“If loving is selfish then I must be the worst person in the world. Because I’ve loved you from the beginning, Soobin. I love you so much it scares me sometimes.”

“Hyung,” Soobin breathes, cries, sobs. “I love you. Will you let me show you?”

Yeonjun nods, smiling, and they both lean in, hypnotized, magnetic, until their lips meet in the middle. Soobin’s lips are salty from his tears and a little chapped, and Yeonjun’s palms are starting to get a little sweaty where they’re pressed against Soobin’s face. It’s short and messy and the angle is a little awkward, because Soobin is really too tall to be sitting in Yeonjun’s lap like this, but it’s perfect in all the ways that matter. Yeonjun can feel something in his chest stitching itself back together. It hurts in the best possible way, it hurts like there’s not enough room in there for all the emotions that are washing over him, but if Yeonjun has to stretch and strain until he bursts to fit all this love inside of him then he gladly will. 

The kiss is short and sweet, but the moment feels infinite - like the birth of a thousand universes at once. Galaxies explode behind Yeonjun’s eyelids, space dust fills the air around them, and they are floating, light years away from the earth. 

Then Soobin pulls away and Yeonjun opens his eyes and they’re back on earth, in that little practice room, too late at night, surrounded by mirrors and polished floorboards and the wispy iridescent matter of dreams that floats around them, tired and a little sweaty, wrapped up in each other’s arms. Safe. Home . 

Yeonjun pulls Soobin close and holds him, chest to chest, and he whispers I love you I love you I love you over and over into the hollow of Soobin’s throat until he’s certain that the words must be branded into his skin. 

-

xii

What did my fingers do before they held him? What did my heart do, with its love? 

 

Later, much later, which is only about five minutes, but feels like a lot more, Yeonjun and Soobin lie on the cold hard floorboards side by side, hands entwined, and stare at the ceiling. It feels like there is a lifetime between the now and the before - the before Soobin reached into Yeonjun’s chest and took the heart that he’d been offering up to him on a platter since the moment he’d first seen him. Soobin’s hand is warm and solid and real in his own. 

“What are we gonna do?” Soobin breathes. He sounds more relaxed than the question suggests, like he knows he should be worried, but can’t bring himself to be. 

Yeonjun hums, pondering the question. “I don’t think I can forget about this,” he says at last. “I can’t go back to before. I can’t stop loving you.”

“I’m not asking you to, hyung,” Soobin murmurs. Yeonjun peeks over at him. His eyes are closed, face and body relaxed. He looks peaceful. “We’ll just have to be discreet, is all.”

“Of course,” Yeonjun says. “It’s not just about us. It’s about the others, too. We should tell them.”

“We will,” Soobin agrees. “I don’t think they’ll be that surprised, anyway.” 

Yeonjun thinks back to all those looks that Taehyun has sent him, the ones that make him feel strangely naked, and huffs out a quiet little laugh. “They definitely won’t.” 

They’re silent for another moment, one that stretches out forever between the sky and the stars. 

“Don’t you wish we could stay like this forever?” he asks Soobin.

Soobin hums. “Not really,” he says. “This is nice. But every moment with you is. And I’m excited to see what comes next. It’s not as scary, with you. I want to spend today with you, sure, but I also want tomorrow and the day after and all the days after that as well.” He pauses for a moment. “That’s why I said I was selfish. I want too much. I want everything.”

“I don’t think love is selfish,” Yeonjun says. “I think it’s the most selfless thing in the world, actually, to give yourself over like that.” 

Soobin’s mouth twists up like it always does when he’s thinking hard about something. “I get what you mean. But love isn’t just giving yourself over. It’s making someone else a part of  you. I don’t think I can exist without you. How is that not selfish?” 

Yeonjun shrugs. “Maybe it is. But I think it can be selfless, too.”

“Well, it can’t be both at once,” Soobin argues, frowning. 

“Why not?” Yeonjun asks, and Soobin pauses, stops, and the silence drags on. “Exactly,” Yeonjun says after a while. “Love doesn’t have to make sense. It can be selfish and selfless all at once. It can give and take. It accepts you just as you are, but at the same time it changes you, and you can never again be the person you were before you started loving. But that doesn’t have to be a bad thing.”

Soobin says nothing for a while. He just squeezes Yeonjun’s hand a little tighter, and rubs his thumb back and forth across Yeonjun’s knuckles. 

“When did you get so wise, hyung?” he mumbles after a while, so quiet that Yeonjun almost misses it. Yeonjun nearly bursts out laughing.

“I’ve had a lot of time to think about it, Soobin-ah. I told you, I’ve loved you since the beginning.” 

Soobin doesn’t say anything. Yeonjun looks over at him, and he’s blushing hard, a deep red that spreads from the apples of his cheeks to the neckline of his t-shirt. 

“I guess you must be right, hyung. I don’t think anything that feels this nice could ever be bad.”

“You could never be a bad person for loving, Soobin-ah,” Yeonjun says. “It just makes you human.”

The words come out without Yeonjun really thinking about them, but when they’re out, hanging in the air between them, he realizes exactly how true they are. There’s nothing more human than loving, and feeling as if it is a gift to be loved in return . 

He closes his eyes and listens and reaches out just to make sure, and sure enough, his chest is quiet. The monster is gone, the monster is dead, all the traces of it erased by Soobin’s love and Soobin’s tears and Soobin’s presence. Now there is space inside his chest for the boy from his mother’s sepia-tinted memories to emerge from his hiding spot, to feel the sun on his face, to hold his hand out and have someone reach out and take it. 

He wonders if this is what it feels like to heal. It feels a lot like freedom, like the wind in his hair, like sailing calm seas with the sun on his face and a lover waiting for him at home. Soobin rolls over onto his side, leans over Yeonjun, holds him close, and his fingers on Yeonjun’s cheek ask can I kiss you again , and Yeonjun’s eyes fluttering shut say yes, please, always , and their lips meet again.

Yeonjun wants to feed Soobin his soul and his lifeblood, wants him to swallow them down and hold Yeonjun inside him like a promise. Instead he holds Soobin close and presses his palms into the warm skin under his hoodie and licks into his mouth, and lets that be enough. 

-

xiii

But then, maybe ‘I don’t believe you’ is the cruelest way to kill a monster.

 

The day Yeonjun’s introduction film drops feels like an end and a beginning all at once. It feels it’s been a lifetime in the making, and in a lot of ways it has. It feels like jumping off the edge of a cliff and trusting that there’ll be someone below to catch him. 

Soobin sits next to him on the couch and squeezes his hand tightly between his own, so tightly it almost hurts, and Yeonjun thinks he might be even more nervous than he is, which is cute, really. 

They all sit and wait together, counting down the minutes until the video goes public on YouTube, and when it does they all watch it together in silence, with bated breath, and then they watch it a second time and tease Yeonjun mercilessly, and then they all scroll through social media together and make sure Yeonjun doesn’t go looking for negative comments or get too caught up in the few that they do come across. Yeonjun has never felt so loved. 

And, really, although he appreciates their presence, and understands why they’re worried that he might spiral into self-doubt and negativity, he doesn’t think they need to. He feels like a completely different person than he was three years ago, but he doesn’t know how to explain it to them in a way that they would understand. He’d told Soobin about the monster in his chest, late at night in that empty practice room, that split second in the time-space continuum that is theirs and only theirs. He doesn’t think that Soobin had understood completely, but he had listened, and afterwards he had held Yeonjun and kissed him and loved him, and that’s all that matters, really. 

The point is that he knows, now, that he is good enough. He has worked hard for this moment, has poured his blood and sweat and tears and the past five years of his life, and his youth and his innocence, and so many other things into this, and they all coalesce and culminate into this moment. His face on the screen in front of him, and the warmth of pride and certainty and self-assurance settling deep in his belly. 

Soobin hugs him tight and peppers soft kisses all over his face, and the others make faces and fake-gag at them, but Yeonjun can see in their smiles that they’re happy for them. Still, they all get up from the couch and run away in a flurry of too-long limbs and loud giggles, piling into the bedroom together to do god knows what, leaving Soobin and Yeonjun alone on the couch together. They lie in comfortable silence for a while, illuminated by the faint light of the screen in front of them, and Yeonjun is reminded of that moment, so many months ago, when he had been in this very same spot with Soobin in his arms, the greyscale TV screen lighting spilling over their bodies, and he had wanted to kiss him so badly but he had been too much of a coward to do so. 

So he cups Soobin’s jaw and tilts his chin down and presses his lips to his, short and sweet. When he pulls away, Soobin is looking at him with a soft smile on his lips, a little bemused. 

“What was that for, hyung?” he asks.

Yeonjun shrugs. “Because I’m selfish. Because I want to be brave. Because I’m happy. Because I love you.”

Soobin hums like he understands, and maybe he really does. He leans down and kisses Yeonjun again, a little longer, a little deeper. “I love you too, hyung,” he murmurs against Yeonjun’s lips, and then they’re silent for a while, speaking with their lips and tongues and hands instead. 

And when they break apart at last, sweaty and panting, bodies merging into one under the blanket, it feels like coming home. Yeonjun is no longer lost at sea, no longer drowning in the darkness of the storm, no longer sinking, dragged under the surface by voracious waves. There is a light shining in the distance, a lighthouse showing him the way home. And he knows, with the certainty of a thousand I love yous , that Soobin will always show him the way home. And he knows that the door will always be open for him, that he will always be able to follow that shining beacon through that house and into that garden of eternal spring where his lover waits, bathed in warm, golden sunshine. His lover, his home, his lightkeeper. 

-

 

And now, once again, I bid my hideous progeny go forth and prosper. 

 

- fin. 

Notes:

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