Chapter Text
The ball rolls along the road, too fast, too smooth. The dusk sky paints its white hexagons purple, and the street beneath it too, the deep, rich color of an unbitten plum. Feet pound against it, untied laces pittering against the faded lines of a lane. Too slow, too unsteady. Time doesn’t comply with him, and the ball is going to get away. Lost forever, until he hears it pop under some car’s tire late in the night.
Or it stops right then and there, under some shoe’s sole, a little too clean, unused. Seungmin looks at the ball, the brand new sneaker holding it in place, and then up at the wearer. A boy, much older than him, but young still. Behind him is the movement and bustle of lifted boxes and packed bags. New neighbors then.
The boy leans down and picks up the ball, his smile crooked on his face, uncertain. As tilted as his English when he hands it back to Seungmin. "Here." Depositing it into Seungmin’s cement scratched up palms, painstakingly gentle for any teenage boy Seungmin has ever known.
Seungmin cradles it to his chest. He won’t lose it again. "Thank you," he says back softly, staring at the teen with an unnerving wide gaze. Blinking, unsure what to do, the older stares back, fingers nervously crossed before him. A tension and sadness written all throughout him. That’s something kids see, always somehow.
He shifts the ball beneath one arm, raising a hand. "Friends?" And the older’s expression breaks and beams, a snort leaving his nose, taken aback. Pleasantly surprised.
He bends down just slightly, shaking Seungmin’s hand obligingly. "Sure. Friends." A name shouts from the house, probably his name. "Gu—" Seungmin tries to catch it, tries to remember it, but he’s too young, hardly conscious, and it slips away with the older boy, alone in a doorway.
The next day, when Seungmin tells his parents about the new neighbors, and his new friend, they tell him there aren’t any new neighbors. The house Seungmin is talking about, has been lived in long before they entered the neighborhood. Still Seungmin returns to the house, searching for his friend, with no success in finding him.
It’s like he’d never been there at all. Or, has yet to come.
✧.*
For all of his life that he can remember, Hyeongjun has had a shadow. A very special shadow, with silverish hair and a soothing, soft spoken voice. Appearing to him sporadically and without occasion. It was just there when it was there, and Hyeongjun learned to anticipate it, to wait for it.
He was always in wait.
The shadow watched over him, the shadow talked to him. Most of all, the shadow knew him. Hyeongjun never learned to be afraid of the shadow. He was always open with the shadow, and the shadow was grateful for it. Hyeongjun was grateful for the shadow. He never felt alone. He never felt unloved.
He loved the shadow too.
The shadow had a name.
✧.*
"Oh Seungmin!"
Stunned, Hyeongjun is helpless to do anything but gape soundlessly at the man before him. Hair freshly dyed, parted over his face beneath his beanie, voice soft. Maybe he’s just slightly different, maybe a lot different, than who Hyeongjun knows. His eyes though, they’re the exact same as they’ve always been, softly curved and sharply cut. Gently gazing right upon Hyeongjun. Always so welcoming, so inviting.
It takes all of Hyeongjun not to just open up right then and there. It takes a lot for him not to vault over his guitar case and embrace him, and have it feel real . He’s never, not in his whole entire life, wanted to feel someone’s touch more.
These eyes, however, have never laid upon him before.
It scares every temptation shaking through his limbs right back between his teeth. His heart leaps in his throat and its pounding is all he can hear over the whirlwind of thoughts cutting through his head. He thought he’d prepared for this day, he’s had so many years. No preparation could have readied him.
He hardly registers the second person there, the door propped open against his shoulder. "Hey, we’re your members," he greets, Hyeongjun’s eyes flying to him, just now processing his presence. "I’m a guitarist too, so it’s exciting to meet you." He bows his head excitedly, and with a dry swallow, Hyeongjun returns the sentiment, his fingers held in a tight grip around the neck of his poor, precious guitar.
His eyes fly immediately back to Seungmin as Seungmin says, "You’re Hyeongjun, right?" And Hyeongjun’s rib cage clenches around his lungs and heart. For a multitude of reasons. His name, leaping from Seungmin’s tongue, is music to his ears. It’s what follows that has his thoughts screeching to a painful stop.
Seungmin doesn’t know him. Seungmin hardly knows his name. Winded, Hyeongjun manages to muster a wobbly smile, nodding his head. He doesn’t trust himself to respond. He doesn’t quite trust himself to do anything but sit right there, and hold his guitar up to his chest, hoping his pulse doesn’t resound through its hollow body.
There’s a shout in the hall, and Jiseok throws a glance over his shoulder, grimacing. "Ah, is that Jungsu-hyung?" Seungmin snorts and turns away to look into the hall. Hyeongjun takes the moment to unabashedly admire him, younger than he’s ever known him, hair still soft, acne still just fading. He seems more real, more tangible. Maybe that’s simply because he is now.
With a quick, aborted farewell, Jiseok leaves the door to fall on Seungmin’s palm, running in the opposite direction of the shout. The door almost closes, and Hyeongjun waits for it to, waits to watch Seungmin walk away, rather than simply vanish. But Seungmin stops it, peers through the crack at him with those piercing eyes, barely outlining Hyeongjun’s figure.
"It was nice to meet you," he says, voice unnecessarily gentle, blanketing Hyeongjun’s hunched and cowering form like soft powder snow. It will preserve Hyeongjun, freeze him in time just as he is. Unmoving. Afraid.
Clearing his throat, searching for his voice, Hyeongjun smiles, the corners of his mouth shaking. He almost wants to cry, he can feel the lump in his throat, something too much begging to be freed from within his larynx. What he replies with though is an earnest, rasping, "Yeah." His voice a wisp of itself that makes Seungmin blink just so, tilting his head a certain way, before letting the door fall shut. His exit mercy.
Exhaling desperately, hanging his head between narrow-boned shoulders, trembling as he thaws, Hyeongjun pulls out his phone, and with shaking fingers, opens his calendar. On the date, April 1st, 2021, Hyeongjun writes down that he finally meets Seungmin.
He doesn’t have to wait anymore.
✧.*
There’s something about their sixth member that begs to be known. It’s in his silence, in his long stares that twist and wind through something no one else can see. In his awkward stances and nervous habits. Every part of him is withdrawn, and Seungmin knows it isn’t just him who wants to reach into Hyeongjun’s head, and pull anything out.
It’s a bit different though. It isn’t a display of altruism for Seungmin, or as it would be in Gunil’s case, responsibility. It’s this deep, unsated yearning. When he catches all the unreadable gazes Hyeongjun sends his way, he’s drawn to look right back, to return something he doesn’t even know how to identify.
From the moment Seungmin meets Hyeongjun, and hears his voice for the very first time, hesitant and slight, he wants to know him. He’s determined to do just that. Them being in the same band, is only a convenient excuse to do just that. Them now living together, in this cramped, dingy dorm of theirs, only offers a convenient surplus of opportunities.
If anyone catches him loitering around the door of Gunil and Hyeongjun’s room, he’ll just say he’s looking for Gunil. He needs advice, or help, anything Gunil will give him without any further question. He doesn’t know why he has the excuse at the ready, but he feels the need to, this nervous energy relentless beneath his skin. It makes his knee bounce. His surroundings change, like they do when his mind is restless.
Hands stuffed in shallow denim pockets, he trains his stare on the ground beneath his feet. He looks up, and there’s a poster on the wall that wasn’t there before. It looks like their logo printed on it, but different from the one he knows now, the one not yet released to the public, much less solidified in their dorm with ink and paper.
He looks down. Looks back up. It’s gone in a moment’s notice, and he breathes out through his nose. The door opens almost too quietly for him to notice, but the two’s door often creaks, and Jungsu complains about it persistently, and Gunil repeatedly swears he’ll fix it, but always forgets. Eventually, Jungsu is going to fix it himself.
So as invisible as Hyeongjun tries to be, he can’t help but wince when the door creaks loudly, alerting Seungmin of his exit. Seungmin pushes off the wall, catching Hyeongjun off guard, standing in the doorway with a colorful cardigan sloppily thrown over his shoulder, wearing equally obnoxiously patterned pants that don’t quite match. Seungmin should kind of hate it. For some reason, on Hyeongjun, he finds himself liking it.
Hyeongjun stares down at him with wide eyes and parted lips, his teeth peeking out from between them, round and noticeable. Kind of cute. "Seungmin-ssi?" He refuses to drop honorifics, in the opposite way Jooyeon was reluctant to ever use them in any context. He’s kind of the exact opposite of Hyeongjun in general. Or maybe they’re more similar than Seungmin thinks, because he’s yet to know Hyeongjun much at all.
It makes Seungmin wonder where they’ll be at this time next week, or next month, even next year. How will the pieces of this band fall into place? Will Jooyeon fit into the space Hyeongjun leaves? Will Seungmin fit somewhere alongside Hyeongjun, close to him?
Hyeongjun’s unsure tone breaks him out of thoughts of the future, brings him back into the now. "Uh, Gunil-nim left a little bit ago. If you…needed him for something." His words blend into an awkward half hearted shrug, his eyes darting between either side of Seungmin’s head, as if seeking escape.
Seungmin shakes his head firmly. He’s not quite sure how to approach Hyeongjun, and it makes him awkward too, standing there before the younger in this in-between stance. "No, I was looking for you. Actually."
Hyeongjun’s mouth parts even more, rounded in quiet, always quiet , surprise, his brows rising into his blond ish, untoned hair. His gaze stops skirting over Seungmin, lands directly on his face, unafraid in a way Seungmin absolutely doesn’t expect. "Oh," he murmurs, surprised, a delicate undertone to his voice Seungmin doesn’t know how to parse, but it sounds like the way lilac looks.
It takes him a beat to add on, "Why?" A new, steady awareness unfolding from his shoulders, broadening them in their narrow lankiness. He’s no less shy than before, but there’s this hopeful shine in his eyes that inexplicably intimidates Seungmin, makes his nerves multiply by a tenfold.
He’s at a sudden loss for words, and he can’t quite remember what he was supposed to tell Hyeongjun, what made up reason he had given himself to convince Hyeongjun to spend time with him. It sounds odd put like that. Makes him want to blush, and he has to resist the blood rushing to his ears. "I just thought I could show you around a little bit more. I…I’ve been a trainee here for a while, and maybe there were things you were still getting to know." Things like your members. Like me.
He twists a silver bracelet around his wrist, Hyeongjun’s eyes snapping to the unconscious movement, mouth pursing. "I don’t know, just in case you were hesitant to ask." He sniffs, uncertain. "I’ll show you everything, so you don’t have to ask anything."
Hyeongjun’s expression flickers strangely, indiscernible, his mouth tilting into a crooked smile, his brows kind of furrowed. "Really? You’d do that?" Seungmin is ready to answer, to give a fraction of himself away, but Hyeongjun adds before he can, eyes sliding to the left, "Isn’t that a little arrogant?" Teasing.
Seungmin should be more miffed, and even though he’s at a loss for words, he’s simply delighted. Giddy, a little. Hyeongjun, teasing him. He’s received a gift too precious to wrap in paper. He smiles back fully, snorting, and Hyeongjun ducks his head suddenly, hair falling over his ears, hiding them. "Maybe. Confidence can go a long way though, Hyeongjun."
Muffled, Hyeongjun nods. "Does it?" He raises his head and tucks his hair behind his ears, as if recomposing himself, and opens his door fully, not wincing at the loud creak this time around. "Sure, then. Do you wanna come to company with me, show me around the practice room?"
Seungmin crosses his arms, clicking his tongue. "I get it, you know your way around."
"No, no, uh." Hyeongjun fiddles with his fingers along the edge of the door. "Thanks. It means a lot to me. That—Thanks." They stand there, left in this incomplete lack of sound that Seungmin doesn’t understand, and Hyeongjun can’t fill. Smile shaking, in that way it does when it’s sometimes directed at Seungmin, Hyeongjun barely looks at him. "We can still practice together," he offers, quiet.
It’s his chance, the opportunity he was sure would present itself. He puffs himself up with some of that confidence he swore he had. "Of course. Maybe we can get lunch after." Together.
✧.*
He can’t help it. He almost forgets that this is a Seungmin who hasn’t ever known him before. Sometimes, he forgets this is possibly a different Seungmin entirely. Slowly, involuntarily, the same way a baby’s fingers automatically grasp at objects placed in their palm, Hyeongjun’s fingers unfurl for Seungmin.
It makes him so unbearably warm inside, that Seungmin dedicates himself to making sure Hyeongjun knows his way around the company, the ins and outs that you can only learn through experience and in Hyeongjun’s case, guidance. It isn’t as much, but he’s there for Hyeongjun. He’s still Hyeongjun’s north star without even realizing it.
He’s sure the others notice it too. The way he takes baby steps with them, careful and cautious, compared to the way he makes leaps and bounds with Seungmin, blind and reckless. He forgets, and it makes him stumble like a child all over again, but he hardly even realizes, because Seungmin looks at him with the same eager softness each and every time.
He lets Seungmin hug him, lets Seungmin hold his hand, lets Seungmin hear his voice and witness his excitement. The way it abruptly rockets and blossoms into being. He lets .
He’s almost so close to letting Seungmin in entirely, as if Seungmin doesn’t reside permanently in a fraction of his heart as it is. Almost, being the key word.
There are these moments of jarring discomfort, that snap him back into reality, into the present. Where it seems like Seungmin is the one forgetting, even if Hyeongjun knows full and well it’s the other way around. When Hyeongjun offers him one half of a sentence, and he doesn’t know how to complete it. When he offers Seungmin his hand, and Seungmin suddenly doesn’t know how to take it.
He hates it. He hates it more than he hates when his fingers hurt. It hurts so much more than metal strings against uncalloused fingertips. It’s this festering throb in his chest that only grows and grows. Every piece of him that Seungmin doesn’t know, is brutally cleaved from his sense of self. It hurts, and he hates it. He doesn’t blame Seungmin for his frustration though. He can’t.
He can’t blame anyone but time itself, so he simply continues to forget. He can’t help it. Letting Seungmin hug him, hugging back, filling this gaping impression left between his lungs that won’t go away, not so much bothersome as it is unforgiving. It’s reflex. His fingers dance along the fretboard of his guitar almost subconsciously the same way they lace with Seungmin’s keyboard dented fingers. Muscle memory.
It’s those same kinds of slip ups that leads to this moment. They’re all a sort of perpetually tired, but there’s this thrum of thrill to their exhaustion. A ceaseless excitement. It plays with them a little bit, presses against them to mold them into the shapes of themselves they’re about to become. Idols.
Hyeongjun, an idol. It would sound strange, if he hadn’t been preparing for this day for so many years, without even realizing it.
They’re debuting, and it feels so very real when they’re on a set, when the camera they’ve hesitantly been getting used to as a figure in their lives, resides permanently in their hands, their behind the scenes becoming fan feeding content.
Hyeongjun watches his members with interest, observes the way they crack under pressure, and the way they patch themselves back up. Watches Gunil play with Jungsu’s hands, so nervous he can’t even speak. Watches Jooyeon swing his and Jiseok’s arms between them, on the edge of falling asleep. Watches Seungmin’s fingers dance emptily over his thighs to a rhythm yet to properly exist.
It’s everything he thought would prickle at him unbearably as an idol, and yet he kind of loves it. And as Gunil gives him his drumsticks to mess around with as he fidgets, and Jungsu knocks Jiseok’s and Jooyeon’s heads together to get them to calm down in their sleep-deprived states, Hyeongjun grows to love them too. It’s an exhilarating—terrifying in the best way—feeling. Loving.
Han Hyeongjun gradually opens up, prying one rib up at a time to reveal his tucked away heart. Of course, a gesture so grand, would cause him to slip up. To trip and stumble and fall .
He’s tired, and so is Seungmin, and they’re sitting beside each other on the couch on set, a room away from where Jungsu is recording his solo shots, alone, with the lights dimmed and all the noises comfortably muffled. They’re never really alone like this, one-on-one. Unbelievably, it’s not entirely Hyeongjun’s fault. Seungmin leans his head on Hyeongjun’s shoulder. That’s not the worst of it.
Hyeongjun leans back, beginning to hum something familiar to him, mumbling into a half-bitten yawn, "Tired, Minnie?"
Seungmin jerks upright, looking at Hyeongjun with sleepy, lidded eyes. Glinting with thinly veiled surprise. "You dropped honorifics," he says lightly. It was more than honorifics though, wasn’t it. Minnie. The name drips with affection and fondness.
Any and all words shrivel at the floor of Hyeongjun’s mouth. His cheeks go bright red. Licking at his chapped lips, tasting the waxy unpleasant residue of lipstick and gritty lipgloss, he nods. It’s all he can do.
Seungmin doesn’t lean back on his shoulder, looking straight ahead with a thoughtful hum. It’s in that moment that Hyeongjun recognizes it isn’t just frustration holding him back.
✧.*
The last time Hyeongjun ever sees Seungmin, they dance.
He’s seventeen and it’s his last year of high school. For some inexplicable, indiscernible reason, he buys a flimsy little ticket for his school’s winter dance. Some western mimicked thing to make up for one trip or another that they didn’t get to go on because of the area’s typical annual storms. It’s supposed to be this kind of big event in their district.
Standing alone, his spine uncomfortably pressed into the rigid gym wall, Hyeongjun doesn’t really understand why. He’s dressed in this jeweled green blazer and matching slacks that are a bit fancier than how any other boy is dressed. Watching his friends and their ironed button ups and tilted smiles dance on the squeaking fake wood floor. He doesn’t see the appeal.
He begins to wonder—has been wondering since the moment he showed his school ID to some volunteering lower classman at the front door—why he’d come at all. His suit and longish hair make him stand out amongst the other students, but it’s easy for him to slink out of the gym unnoticed, into the dimly lit and eerily vacated school building hallway.
He feels distinctly stupid, standing there just like that, gracelessly hunched over to hide himself from nonexistent eyes, stuck in place. Some delusion within him telling him to go back. He’ll dance and he’ll enjoy it. All the swaying bodies and flickering lights and the dark obscuring nothing but aching feet.
Maybe he would enjoy it. He’s already stepped out though. Frankly, he’s too wary now to step back in. So he pulls off his blazer, folds it neatly over his arms, and walks slowly, deliberately, along the halls. Trying to make as little noise as possible with the thick soles of his loafers. Examining all the things on the walls, the stickers on the lockers.
He’s leaving this school soon, and he feels nothing sentimental about it. That’s how he always is though, standing before his locker, already emptied out and cleaned even though there’s a month still left. Looking steadfast into the future, waiting and waiting and waiting for it to arrive, never really aware of his surroundings, of his present. He already knows what’s important, and what isn’t. So why bother?
He makes to turn around, startling as a figure moves in the unlit hall around the corner. He lets out a trembling breath, expelling all that makes him feel disjointed from within. He’s no longer in a place he doesn’t belong. Well, he’s still here, still in the same place as always, but now he’s here too. And where he is, tells Hyeongjun exactly where the right place to be is.
Taking in the cool-toned tiled floors and the broken locks on asymmetrical lockers, dispelling that air of confusion and disorientation that he always initially appears with, Seungmin looks at him. Tilts his head, just slight, assessing Hyeongjun as he is today, and not as he was the last time Seungmin saw him. Months ago at this point. His visits more infrequent as Hyeongjun grows, more seldom.
Seungmin blinks, swallows. Voice softer than the static air sitting stagnant in halls meant to be perceived when busy and walked, never this empty. "You grew out your hair." He comes close, not hesitating to flit the tips of Hyeongjun’s hair over the backs of his fingers, Hyeongjun not hesitating to let him, merely watching as Seungmin brings the strand to his collarbone, measuring its length.
"Yeah," Hyeongjun murmurs back, just as quiet, "If I’m gonna be a cool rockstar one day. I needed to try it out." Seungmin smiles, secretive, and Hyeongjun knows better than to ask. He’s accepted long ago that there are things Seungmin knows that he’ll just have to wait and learn.
He’s very, very good at waiting.
"Still seventeen?" Seungmin asks, his fingers falling from Hyeongjun’s hair, looping loosely over the hemmed edge of his pocket. Hyeongjun wonders how Seungmin is in a different outfit every time he sees him. Where does he go, when he’s not with Hyeongjun? Hyeongjun can only hope he isn’t alone, wherever it is. It would be unfair, if he was always keeping Hyeongjun company, to not have his own shadows.
Hyeongjun nods his head to the locker beside him. His locker. He doesn’t think Seungmin has seen it before, and like with everything relating to Hyeongjun, Seungmin abruptly regards it with rapt interest. "Yes." And before Seungmin can ask. "There’s nothing in it. I already cleaned it out."
Seungmin nods, chewing on his cheek, considering something soundlessly. "That ready to graduate?" he asks, keeping his thoughts to himself where they always remain. "Already know where you’re going after?"
Hyeongjun rubs his thumb along the silky fabric of his blazer, snagging it along the buttons, and then repeating the process. "I think so." Seungmin glances up at him. "Well I…Yeah I know where I’m going." Pairing his faultily confident words with a lopsided smile. It appeases Seungmin entirely.
"So," he says, eyeing Hyeongjun critically, "What’s with the fancy clothes?"
Suddenly, so much more self-conscious than he had been the entire night despite sticking out like a sore thumb, Hyeongjun shrugs under his ill-fitting button up and crooked tie. Unable to meet Seungmin’s gaze, feeling gangly and lanky in all the wrong ways, Hyeongjun mutters, "School dance. Strange, right?"
He’s so thankful that Seungmin doesn’t ask him why he isn’t in the gym, dancing with all the others and enjoying the same pop music assaulting their ears. He’s so thankful that Seungmin knows it’s a useless question, knows Hyeongjun enough to never ask.
A beat passes of Seungmin just staring at him. Reading him from front to back, skimming through his pages with lithe fingers and a readied pen to take notes perched behind a delicately pierced ear. "Well, you got something out of it, didn’t you?" he finally asks, measured.
Worrying on his lip, Hyeongjun glances back over his shoulder at the gym doors where purple and blue light leak out from the cracks. The music pulses muffled through the walls, voices and laughter fading into the hall with the light. "I wanted to."
Wanted for once to feel the same as everyone else, to feel heard even when you couldn’t hear anything at all over the big gym speakers. He thought maybe something about a dance’s air would take him in its arms and coax him into a new, better version of himself. He’d thought wrong, evidently.
As if somehow sensing his thoughts, the corners of Seungmin’s mouth curve downward, his gaze following Hyeongjun’s. There’s that steely resolve in his eye that Hyeongjun has grown to anticipate. The music from the gym mellows as he steps in closer, taking Hyeongjun’s blazer and neatly folding it before setting it beneath Hyeongjun’s locker. "Your tie is crooked," Seungmin notes in a hum.
Hyeongjun doesn’t speak, doesn’t question, not really needing to, and definitely not wanting to ruin whatever moment brews. His arms hang stiffly before him, no longer having anything to hold, not sure what else to do with them, especially when Seungmin is only approaching closer and closer. Away from the darkness and into the flickering fluorescent light seeping in from a hall over.
It’s not an attractive light, but Seungmin’s copper hair and gelled lashes glow prettily beneath it nonetheless. He doesn’t seem real. He never seems real. Often, Hyeongjun has to wonder if he’s hallucinating, if Seungmin is all but a figment of fantasy. An imaginary friend he’d yet to lose. He thinks if the light hits Seungmin just right, he’ll be transparent. Thinks if he were to try and touch Seungmin, his fingers would fall through nothing.
Hyeongjun’s breath catches in his throat when he realizes that this close, they’re eye to eye. In no time, he will be taller than Seungmin. It allows him to entertain thoughts he hasn’t allowed himself to since he was freshly a teen, or still a clueless child. It doesn’t help when Seungmin only steps closer, surely able to feel Hyeongjun’s nervous breaths. He wants to wonder why he’s nervous, but the music is slowing and Seungmin is touching his hand, and that explains anything and everything.
Tentatively, with caution, Seungmin twines their fingers, giving Hyeongjun’s hands something to do, gently, graciously. They don’t talk about it, they just come together, awkwardly, fittingly. Swaying in juxtaposition, Seungmin graceful, Hyeongjun clumsy, to the soothing music barely filtering into the hall.
"I’ve missed dancing," Seungmin hums, leading Hyeongjun this way and that, in small circles that don’t serve to make Hyeongjun dizzy, but he’s lightheaded anyways.
Falling into the comfortable pit of butterflies that have long nested in Seungmin’s presence, Hyeongjun lets the ease of this wash over him. It doesn’t make him move any more smoothly, but it doesn’t feel so clunky. "You dance?" he asks, no surprise in his voice. It makes sense. Seungmin feels made to dance.
Seungmin smiles faintly, bittersweetly. "When I can." It doesn’t matter though, he’s dancing now, and with Hyeongjun too. For a while, they do just that, in welcomed silence. Stares trained on each other’s feet. They make sure never to step on each other’s toes, not once.
Without even realizing it, the prickling discomfort and shame that had grown in a thin, sticky film over Hyeongjun’s skin as the night had progressed, washes away with the scent of Seungmin’s vanilla perfume and homey lavender dryer sheets. He feels…normal. There’s nothing about him at that moment that he so desperately needs to change.
Being in Seungmin’s hands feels like coming home.
It feels sudden, uncharacteristic, but it isn’t really when he pulls Seungmin into a hug. Bypassing Seungmin’s hold on his hands to wrap wavering arms around Seungmin’s midsection. They may be the same height now, but Hyeongjun is still smaller, Seungmin still older, his warmth engulfing and enveloping him. Seungmin lets out a small, winded, "Oh." He doesn’t hesitate to return the embrace, swiftly too.
It fills him with so much comfort it’s almost overwhelming, a lump growing in his throat. He never predicted his night ending this way, but it’s more perfect than anything he had wanted when he had stupidly and impulsively bought that ugly paper ticket.
"Minnie-hyung." Seungmin stiffens just slightly, always taken aback by the nickname Hyeongjun had given him years and years ago. "Thank you. For being here." He wants to say more, wants to say so much more, everything , but Seungmin pulls him closer, crashing his mouth into his shoulder, shutting him up and snapping his teeth into his tongue.
It’s a reminder, more than a silencer. Dredging up that dread and uncertainty that Hyeongjun can’t dismiss when Seungmin is involved. He’s showing up less, Hyeongjun sees him less. As time goes by, Seungmin fades, becomes more and more of something intangible to Hyeongjun. Who knows when he’ll see Seungmin next? Who knows who Seungmin will see, the next time he appears wherever Hyeongjun is.
They’re never gonna meet each other exactly like this again. They’ll be different people, when they meet again.
What if Seungmin doesn’t like who he meets then?
It’s tiring. Hyeongjun’s patience has never been broad. He’s been raising these butterflies for so long, and he’s tired of keeping them inside. He wants to let them out, wants to let them fly. He just wants Seungmin by his side forever, he doesn’t want to wait anymore. He knows that makes him selfish. He’s an only child though, he never learned to share. Never learned to split time.
"Something’s gonna happen soon," Seungmin says vaguely, running his fingers through the ends of Hyeongjun’s hair. Hyeongjun thinks he’s been wanting to do it all night, and only now has just given in. It’s fair. Hyeongjun gave in too. "You know where you’re going right?"
In response, Hyeongjun merely groans, burying his nose in Seungmin’s loose button down. It’s the kind of shirt Hyeongjun probably should have worn to this dance. But Seungmin wore it for him, it’s okay. Though he’s tired of Seungmin’s secrets, the ones of the future Hyeongjun has yet to be privy to, has yet to step in to. If he isn’t going to tell Hyeongjun, he might as well not mention it at all.
Seungmin knows that too, snorting fondly. "Sorry, it’s just…" He drops his chin to Hyeongjun’s head, and it erases all his dread and irritation, heart picking up pace in his chest. Seungmin’s voice gets small, goes soft. "Do you remember? When you were little, I promised you something." Hyeongjun’s heart then races. He doesn’t remember. It’s too late to remember. Still he tries to.
"I never break my promises." He really never does. Hyeongjun is the proof. Hyeongjun is a promise too. "Well, I told you something. It will happen very soon. I promise you." A date. An exact date to be precise. That’s what Seungmin had sworn him, but Hyeongjun could never remember that date. He never wrote it down. For some reason, he’d thought it was a joke.
But he believed Seungmin. Seungmin never breaks promises, and he would never break Hyeongjun.
He nods weakly against Seungmin’s neck, chest heaving shallowly. He pulls back just slightly, their faces so close, their eyes right there next to each other. Seungmin still doesn’t feel real this close. Too gorgeous, too perfect in Hyeongjun’s arms. He feels realer though, closer to Hyeongjun’s reality.
He wants to say it, wants to say it so bad, the words ready on his tongue, old and weary, they’ve been sitting there for so long. But Seungmin speaks first, cocking his head and smiling smally, sadly. He holds onto Hyeongjun tighter, but his grip still becomes looser.
"Soon, Hyeongjun. Wait for me?"
Hyeongjun swallows the words, swallows his desperation, only able to oblige. Ghosting his touch just barely over Seungmin’s cheek with his own vow, "I’ll always wait." Before Seungmin promptly fades into the darkness of the hall, the light still flickering in and out. Hyeongjun’s shadow, through and through.
He leaves Hyeongjun, clumsy and alone on two left feet, stumbling into his emptied locker, arms empty, almost trampling over his blazer. Still crisply folded on the ground beneath him. Proof. Proof that Seungmin wasn’t an illusion, a fantasy, though he kind of was. Still he was real . Somewhere in time, somewhere in Hyeongjun’s life, Seungmin is real.
Knees wobbly, Hyeongjun bends down to pick up the blazer, bringing it close to his face, just to see if he could still smell the remnants of Seungmin along the velvet green. All he smells though is the poor imitation of them. The dryer sheets he bought himself, only to fall flat on his own clothes, never right.
It’s okay though. Pulling the blazer back on, standing straight, leaving without a goodbye to any of his friends. Tonight, he’ll practice his guitar, perfect his notes. He’ll check his inbox for the email from a certain company. He’ll do what he always does, what he does best in spite of all of who he is, all the patience he lacked.
He’ll wait.