echoes of distant dreams
echoes of distant dreams
woohyun centric; woohyun/sunggyu
pg
2335 words
Woohyun decides he quite likes the feeling of having some of the weight of world on his shoulders. Sunggyu realizes he doesn't have to carry it on his own.
echoes of distant dreams
When Woohyun is in elementary school he realizes he quite likes the sound of his own voice.
Slight horror strikes his mother's face when he tells her this, bright smile and backpack hanging off his shoulders. Just what she needed. A son with an ego problem. Woohyun lets her fret, smiles endearingly and waves her off with a grin to mean I was just kidding; except maybe I wasn't. She can never tell the difference either way.
He doesn't tell his father, neither does his mother. Neither of them are stupid. Woohyun sings in the shower, whistles on his way to school and keeps that thought their secret.
*
He is in his second year of middle school and Woohyun decides he can sing. This is not product of a young boy's ostentatious becoming of a man and the attitude that comes with it. It's simply plain to see or rather, hear.
Down the line, Woohyun will not remember if he placed or how big the crowd at the talent show was. All he will remember is this sense of belonging, of home. The world is a limpid array of possibilities opening up before him but Woohyun already had his future set in stone even then.
To sing and Woohyun had known he had that something, talent or maybe just perseverance, to make it happen.
*
Everything is details after that.
He goes into modeling because a: he has the face for it and b: it's a foot in the door. Show business is one big interconnected system of bodies of water. Pick any river, follow it up or down stream and sooner or later you will end up in the sea if you are strong enough to battle the current. Woohyun is willing to swim it with bared teeth until his arms numb from water weight and saline intoxicating his skin.
Luckily, he doesn't have to. He would have. Even if no one believes that, Woohyun knows he would have.
*
Woohyun always remembers the best advice his father ever gave him.
Expect the unexpected, son.
Tried and true no matter who, what, you are. The son was so Woohyun never forgot. Woohyun chooses to think his father was kidding. He knows Woohyun won't, can’t, forget. His father isn't known for his comedy but he has his moments.
The nicest way Woohyun can describe Woolim Entertainment as is quaint. In earlier days Woohyun always dreamed of the Big Three, becoming the missing sixth god of the east or Korea's real Justin Timberlake. Sometimes dreams don't pan out and reality steps in. Woohyun steps up and takes reality by the hand, and doesn't settle but thinks at a smaller scale. His dreams are just as big.
He's been a trainee at Woolim for maybe a week when his manager says, "Ah. Woohyun-ah. This is Sunggyu. You might debut together. Treat each other well."
Woohyun smiles at Sungyyu, his default setting and his first reaction when meeting someone new, and Sunggyu does smile back but there is something off. It isn't the way Sunggyu's eyes morph into miniscule slivers on his face or the way his mouth is all lips and no teeth. It is the hesitance right before his lips stretch out. Smiles should not be paired with narrowed eyes but Sunggyu manages to do so.
Woohyun knows Sunggyu is not what his father meant when he said the unexpected but that is exactly what he is.
*
"Practice makes perfect," is Sunggyu's life philosophy. Woohyun thinks they are too young for stubbornness, for thought processes akin to Aristotle and Confucius, for hesitance. There is a two year age gap between them. Maybe that makes a world of difference.
Everyone knows Sunggyu wanted to be a rockstar. Woohyun hears the murmurs not that it is worthy gossip in his opinion, he's seen the performances, slight shock and trepidation of how synthetics work and the guy chewing out his words across an ill lit stage and Sunggyu are the same person. Here is where dreams and reality collide, a perfect example. Woohyun isn't sure if what Sunggyu is doing can be coined as settling but Woohyun would have chose reality over an ill lit dream as well.
"If you push yourself too far you'll wear yourself out before it even starts. Haven't you ever heard of work hard, play harder?" Woohyun's intentions aren't condescending, don't mean to patronize in fact he's trying to throw Sunggyu a lifesaver, sometimes he sees the determination swirl in Sunggyu's eyes traveling like a cyclone. If Sunggyu doesn't let go all the spiteful empty words the naysayers and faithless said with such an unrelenting grip, he might drown. Woohyun doesn't know how much he cares about Sunggyu but it is a fact that Sunggyu is going somewhere and that is exactly where Woohyun wants to be.
Sunggyu looks up from jotting notes on the margins of his sheet music, regards Woohyun silently for a moment. Sunggyu's stare is intimidating only after Myungsoo's with this sheer blankness that says more than you'd like. Howon's is a poker face, bottled up tight, he barely let's himself in on what he's feeling. Sunggyu's is calm stoic, the calm before the storm because his eyes are all placid waters withholding the storm his words are about to wreack havoc on.
"If you don't push yourself why even bother? No one is going to do it for you."
Everyone knows Sunggyu doesn't like Woohyun. Everyone knows Woohyun doesn't push himself the way Sunggyu does because he thinks he doesn't have to. Woohyun thinks no one should.
Everyone knows Woohyun doesn't like Sunggyu. No one knows a part of him wishes he did.
*
The day Sunggyu tells them they aren't good enough, something changes.
Management has been testing out the waters for a few months, mixing and matching trainees like this season's throw away pieces, turn them inside out over and over again until they come undone at the seams.
They seem to stick for some reason. To an insider's perspective it's hard to tell why they've bundled them up together. They aren't perfect seven peas in an over grown pod, Howon seems to not understand the term team while Myungsoo seems turned on only by apathy and Sungyeol doesn't seem to add much of anything. But here they are.
Five minutes pass, Sungjong's jaw is still glued to the floor and the manager's voice still rings and resonates in the practice room. They are the chosen ones. Them.
"I hope you know this means nothing."
There is a what stumbling out in Dongwoo's voice but it gets ambushed by the fury in not Sunggyu's voice but his words. He leans against the door, the mirrors displaying all of his angles, the tap of his index finger on his forearm. Calm, collected Sunggyu who is nothing more than a volcano at a boiling point. The last thing anyone wants is for it to go off but there is this curious thrill and when it destroys, Woohyun stands there and watches in awe.
"If you think this is it, that we've made it, you're wrong. This. Now is when the real work starts. We are nothing and unless you're willing to give it all you've got, that is all we're going to be. Nothing."
Woohyun's blood boils. His hands clench and he wants to maybe press his fist to Sunggyu's mouth for ruining this for them, for Woohyun, for himself. He's sick and tired of Sunggyu's do or die, you're not doing it right unless your sweat slips past your pores like blood and you can't feel your own heart pumping life through your body.
Instead, Woohyun relaxes his fists, takes a breath and interprets Sunggyu's words for what they are.
The truth. Sunggyu isn't being cruel, Woohyun would say he's possibly not capable of it which is a lie. All humans are capable of cruelty. His words are acid. They aren't lethal but the taste it leaves in your mouth is a wake up, a reminder. This is the starting line. Sunggyu wants them to cross it. All of them.
"Understood?"
Sunggyu isn't even looking at him. Woohyun is the first to nod.
"Understood?" Sunggyu repeats, his eyes latched onto Myungsoo's and there is this palpable tension, of recognizing Sunggyu as what they always knew he would be. Leader. Their back bone. A threat. Myungsoo stares back at him, this carefreeness cancelled out by the tick in his left cheek from keeping his composure and he cares. Myungsoo might care more than any of them.
"Understood."
It is then that Sunggyu's hands stop shaking. It is then Woohun notices they were shaking at all to begin with.
*
There is a difference between what you need to do and what you are willing to do.
Dongwoo doesn't protest about sleeping on the floor and Sungyeol takes his one line like a man, says nothing about Sunggyu and Woohyun carrying most of the song, and Hoya never says a thing about sharing the spotlight of main dancer, swears all he needs is to be able to dance.
They all make sacrifices they weren't told they'd have to make, they bend and weave around each other until they can live without Sunjong's elbow piercing Myungsoo's lung and Sungyeol stops stepping on everyone's toes when he stumbles into a room sprinting uncontainable joie de vivre disguised as insanity. Or they learn to live with it. Either way, it isn't smooth sailing but they sail and that in itself is something.
"What's this?"
"Food. You know that stuff we eat so we don't die because we aren't robots like you like thinking we are."
Sunggyu studies the piping container of instant ramen, tries deciphering what the lines of Woohyun's tightly woven smile means. He shrugs after a quick review, no time for in-depth studies of Woohyun's intentions and digs in. Practice had been tough today, the way it is everyday with their limbs shaking and begging for mercy and their bones caving in under the pressure. None of them have given out yet. Woohyun hopes he never sees the day Dongwoo has to pick himself off the floor with broken knees and help Hoya pop his dismantled shoulder back in place. Or Sungyeol. Or any of them. Even Sunggyu.
Especially Sunggyu for there would never be any way to repair them if they lost their backbone.
Sunggyu sighs into the cup and the steam clouds around him, a mist shielding him as he broods in peace. He yelled at Sungjong today. Again. The shake in his hands was worse than ever, the strain in his voice to keep emotion at bay, always at bay and maybe that's the problem. Sunggyu isn't soft spoken tear tracked words and unrestraint. He is level headed calm where most of the time, the storm is a placeholder, a warning before the real storm comes and they will have true devastation to face.
And that's it, Woohyun thinks watching Sunggyu hide his face. Sunggyu isn't a cyclone. Sunggyu is the English sun, always hiden by the clouds, dark and grey even on dreary summer days.
"You don't have the weight of the world on your shoulders."
The mist clears up a bit and Sunggyu frowns at Woohyun. He does that a lot and Woohyun is sick of it.
"We're a team now. We. You wouldn't have to pull us along if you'd just let us run with you."
Woohyun knows Sunggyu doesn't exactly understand, that he wants to ask what does running have to do with anything but doesn't because Sunggyu thinks it sounds stupid.
Woohyun leans over, there is no hesitation at all when he pats Sunggyu's arm because maybe Sunggyu does have the weight of the world forced upon his shoulders, maybe a part of Sunggyu feels like he deserves it along with the echo of distant dreams, giving in and possibly a part of himself Sunggyu left in some rundown club like a beacon home in the middle of Seoul taunting him in hushed whispers.
Maybe that's why Sunggyu thinks it okay to grip the plastic cup so hard the broth almost sloshes over as he lets his shoulders cave in and he leans his head on Woohyun's shoulder.
Maybe it's why Woohyun let's him but he has no idea why he takes some of that weight or why it feels good. Right.
Sunggyu finishes his dinner eventually and it's not long before he falls asleep, his snores falling onto Woohyun's ear and his breath fanning his neck. Even in his sleep Sunggyu sounds like a perfectly off tempo ballad and Woohyun has to keep himself from lulling off to sleep too. He has Dongwoo drag Sunggyu off to bed and he is the one to remind everyone to get a good night's sleep.
"Practice is at six thirty!"
Sungjong frowns at how paradoxical it sounds to say that in such a happy voice. Hoya stares at him but says nothing.
Woohyun falls asleep that night, a chip the size of Australia perched on his left shoulder, and his slumber is light but calm, indulges in the thought that should Sunggyu ever need repairing, Woohyun would be willing to piece him back together with fragments of his own bones.
*
The day of their debut stage, Sunggyu's words are rays of sun, his breath is warm and there is calm but the storm is not impending, it is here, no longer the threatening beast.
"We are Infinite."
Infinite means forever. And how wishful are they with their naïveté to want forever but that is exactly what they are. Past the stage and the blinding lights and the adoring fans and the seducing lure of fame and success; Infinite is forever.
Before they go on stage, they all hold hands. Myungsoo's nails pierce Hoya's palm and Sungyeol almost cuts off Dongwooo's circulation and he pays it forward on Sungjong’s hand. Sunggyu grips Woohyun's fingers, a beat passes after their eyes meet and he smiles.
Woohyun smiles back and once the song stars, Sunggyu's voice is the thing of dreams made reality.
*
a/n: So first Infinite fic. Been into these boys since their debut but haven't been able to write fic for them until now. Any Inspirits watching the comm?
woohyun centric; woohyun/sunggyu
pg
2335 words
Woohyun decides he quite likes the feeling of having some of the weight of world on his shoulders. Sunggyu realizes he doesn't have to carry it on his own.
echoes of distant dreams
When Woohyun is in elementary school he realizes he quite likes the sound of his own voice.
Slight horror strikes his mother's face when he tells her this, bright smile and backpack hanging off his shoulders. Just what she needed. A son with an ego problem. Woohyun lets her fret, smiles endearingly and waves her off with a grin to mean I was just kidding; except maybe I wasn't. She can never tell the difference either way.
He doesn't tell his father, neither does his mother. Neither of them are stupid. Woohyun sings in the shower, whistles on his way to school and keeps that thought their secret.
*
He is in his second year of middle school and Woohyun decides he can sing. This is not product of a young boy's ostentatious becoming of a man and the attitude that comes with it. It's simply plain to see or rather, hear.
Down the line, Woohyun will not remember if he placed or how big the crowd at the talent show was. All he will remember is this sense of belonging, of home. The world is a limpid array of possibilities opening up before him but Woohyun already had his future set in stone even then.
To sing and Woohyun had known he had that something, talent or maybe just perseverance, to make it happen.
*
Everything is details after that.
He goes into modeling because a: he has the face for it and b: it's a foot in the door. Show business is one big interconnected system of bodies of water. Pick any river, follow it up or down stream and sooner or later you will end up in the sea if you are strong enough to battle the current. Woohyun is willing to swim it with bared teeth until his arms numb from water weight and saline intoxicating his skin.
Luckily, he doesn't have to. He would have. Even if no one believes that, Woohyun knows he would have.
*
Woohyun always remembers the best advice his father ever gave him.
Expect the unexpected, son.
Tried and true no matter who, what, you are. The son was so Woohyun never forgot. Woohyun chooses to think his father was kidding. He knows Woohyun won't, can’t, forget. His father isn't known for his comedy but he has his moments.
The nicest way Woohyun can describe Woolim Entertainment as is quaint. In earlier days Woohyun always dreamed of the Big Three, becoming the missing sixth god of the east or Korea's real Justin Timberlake. Sometimes dreams don't pan out and reality steps in. Woohyun steps up and takes reality by the hand, and doesn't settle but thinks at a smaller scale. His dreams are just as big.
He's been a trainee at Woolim for maybe a week when his manager says, "Ah. Woohyun-ah. This is Sunggyu. You might debut together. Treat each other well."
Woohyun smiles at Sungyyu, his default setting and his first reaction when meeting someone new, and Sunggyu does smile back but there is something off. It isn't the way Sunggyu's eyes morph into miniscule slivers on his face or the way his mouth is all lips and no teeth. It is the hesitance right before his lips stretch out. Smiles should not be paired with narrowed eyes but Sunggyu manages to do so.
Woohyun knows Sunggyu is not what his father meant when he said the unexpected but that is exactly what he is.
*
"Practice makes perfect," is Sunggyu's life philosophy. Woohyun thinks they are too young for stubbornness, for thought processes akin to Aristotle and Confucius, for hesitance. There is a two year age gap between them. Maybe that makes a world of difference.
Everyone knows Sunggyu wanted to be a rockstar. Woohyun hears the murmurs not that it is worthy gossip in his opinion, he's seen the performances, slight shock and trepidation of how synthetics work and the guy chewing out his words across an ill lit stage and Sunggyu are the same person. Here is where dreams and reality collide, a perfect example. Woohyun isn't sure if what Sunggyu is doing can be coined as settling but Woohyun would have chose reality over an ill lit dream as well.
"If you push yourself too far you'll wear yourself out before it even starts. Haven't you ever heard of work hard, play harder?" Woohyun's intentions aren't condescending, don't mean to patronize in fact he's trying to throw Sunggyu a lifesaver, sometimes he sees the determination swirl in Sunggyu's eyes traveling like a cyclone. If Sunggyu doesn't let go all the spiteful empty words the naysayers and faithless said with such an unrelenting grip, he might drown. Woohyun doesn't know how much he cares about Sunggyu but it is a fact that Sunggyu is going somewhere and that is exactly where Woohyun wants to be.
Sunggyu looks up from jotting notes on the margins of his sheet music, regards Woohyun silently for a moment. Sunggyu's stare is intimidating only after Myungsoo's with this sheer blankness that says more than you'd like. Howon's is a poker face, bottled up tight, he barely let's himself in on what he's feeling. Sunggyu's is calm stoic, the calm before the storm because his eyes are all placid waters withholding the storm his words are about to wreack havoc on.
"If you don't push yourself why even bother? No one is going to do it for you."
Everyone knows Sunggyu doesn't like Woohyun. Everyone knows Woohyun doesn't push himself the way Sunggyu does because he thinks he doesn't have to. Woohyun thinks no one should.
Everyone knows Woohyun doesn't like Sunggyu. No one knows a part of him wishes he did.
*
The day Sunggyu tells them they aren't good enough, something changes.
Management has been testing out the waters for a few months, mixing and matching trainees like this season's throw away pieces, turn them inside out over and over again until they come undone at the seams.
They seem to stick for some reason. To an insider's perspective it's hard to tell why they've bundled them up together. They aren't perfect seven peas in an over grown pod, Howon seems to not understand the term team while Myungsoo seems turned on only by apathy and Sungyeol doesn't seem to add much of anything. But here they are.
Five minutes pass, Sungjong's jaw is still glued to the floor and the manager's voice still rings and resonates in the practice room. They are the chosen ones. Them.
"I hope you know this means nothing."
There is a what stumbling out in Dongwoo's voice but it gets ambushed by the fury in not Sunggyu's voice but his words. He leans against the door, the mirrors displaying all of his angles, the tap of his index finger on his forearm. Calm, collected Sunggyu who is nothing more than a volcano at a boiling point. The last thing anyone wants is for it to go off but there is this curious thrill and when it destroys, Woohyun stands there and watches in awe.
"If you think this is it, that we've made it, you're wrong. This. Now is when the real work starts. We are nothing and unless you're willing to give it all you've got, that is all we're going to be. Nothing."
Woohyun's blood boils. His hands clench and he wants to maybe press his fist to Sunggyu's mouth for ruining this for them, for Woohyun, for himself. He's sick and tired of Sunggyu's do or die, you're not doing it right unless your sweat slips past your pores like blood and you can't feel your own heart pumping life through your body.
Instead, Woohyun relaxes his fists, takes a breath and interprets Sunggyu's words for what they are.
The truth. Sunggyu isn't being cruel, Woohyun would say he's possibly not capable of it which is a lie. All humans are capable of cruelty. His words are acid. They aren't lethal but the taste it leaves in your mouth is a wake up, a reminder. This is the starting line. Sunggyu wants them to cross it. All of them.
"Understood?"
Sunggyu isn't even looking at him. Woohyun is the first to nod.
"Understood?" Sunggyu repeats, his eyes latched onto Myungsoo's and there is this palpable tension, of recognizing Sunggyu as what they always knew he would be. Leader. Their back bone. A threat. Myungsoo stares back at him, this carefreeness cancelled out by the tick in his left cheek from keeping his composure and he cares. Myungsoo might care more than any of them.
"Understood."
It is then that Sunggyu's hands stop shaking. It is then Woohun notices they were shaking at all to begin with.
*
There is a difference between what you need to do and what you are willing to do.
Dongwoo doesn't protest about sleeping on the floor and Sungyeol takes his one line like a man, says nothing about Sunggyu and Woohyun carrying most of the song, and Hoya never says a thing about sharing the spotlight of main dancer, swears all he needs is to be able to dance.
They all make sacrifices they weren't told they'd have to make, they bend and weave around each other until they can live without Sunjong's elbow piercing Myungsoo's lung and Sungyeol stops stepping on everyone's toes when he stumbles into a room sprinting uncontainable joie de vivre disguised as insanity. Or they learn to live with it. Either way, it isn't smooth sailing but they sail and that in itself is something.
"What's this?"
"Food. You know that stuff we eat so we don't die because we aren't robots like you like thinking we are."
Sunggyu studies the piping container of instant ramen, tries deciphering what the lines of Woohyun's tightly woven smile means. He shrugs after a quick review, no time for in-depth studies of Woohyun's intentions and digs in. Practice had been tough today, the way it is everyday with their limbs shaking and begging for mercy and their bones caving in under the pressure. None of them have given out yet. Woohyun hopes he never sees the day Dongwoo has to pick himself off the floor with broken knees and help Hoya pop his dismantled shoulder back in place. Or Sungyeol. Or any of them. Even Sunggyu.
Especially Sunggyu for there would never be any way to repair them if they lost their backbone.
Sunggyu sighs into the cup and the steam clouds around him, a mist shielding him as he broods in peace. He yelled at Sungjong today. Again. The shake in his hands was worse than ever, the strain in his voice to keep emotion at bay, always at bay and maybe that's the problem. Sunggyu isn't soft spoken tear tracked words and unrestraint. He is level headed calm where most of the time, the storm is a placeholder, a warning before the real storm comes and they will have true devastation to face.
And that's it, Woohyun thinks watching Sunggyu hide his face. Sunggyu isn't a cyclone. Sunggyu is the English sun, always hiden by the clouds, dark and grey even on dreary summer days.
"You don't have the weight of the world on your shoulders."
The mist clears up a bit and Sunggyu frowns at Woohyun. He does that a lot and Woohyun is sick of it.
"We're a team now. We. You wouldn't have to pull us along if you'd just let us run with you."
Woohyun knows Sunggyu doesn't exactly understand, that he wants to ask what does running have to do with anything but doesn't because Sunggyu thinks it sounds stupid.
Woohyun leans over, there is no hesitation at all when he pats Sunggyu's arm because maybe Sunggyu does have the weight of the world forced upon his shoulders, maybe a part of Sunggyu feels like he deserves it along with the echo of distant dreams, giving in and possibly a part of himself Sunggyu left in some rundown club like a beacon home in the middle of Seoul taunting him in hushed whispers.
Maybe that's why Sunggyu thinks it okay to grip the plastic cup so hard the broth almost sloshes over as he lets his shoulders cave in and he leans his head on Woohyun's shoulder.
Maybe it's why Woohyun let's him but he has no idea why he takes some of that weight or why it feels good. Right.
Sunggyu finishes his dinner eventually and it's not long before he falls asleep, his snores falling onto Woohyun's ear and his breath fanning his neck. Even in his sleep Sunggyu sounds like a perfectly off tempo ballad and Woohyun has to keep himself from lulling off to sleep too. He has Dongwoo drag Sunggyu off to bed and he is the one to remind everyone to get a good night's sleep.
"Practice is at six thirty!"
Sungjong frowns at how paradoxical it sounds to say that in such a happy voice. Hoya stares at him but says nothing.
Woohyun falls asleep that night, a chip the size of Australia perched on his left shoulder, and his slumber is light but calm, indulges in the thought that should Sunggyu ever need repairing, Woohyun would be willing to piece him back together with fragments of his own bones.
*
The day of their debut stage, Sunggyu's words are rays of sun, his breath is warm and there is calm but the storm is not impending, it is here, no longer the threatening beast.
"We are Infinite."
Infinite means forever. And how wishful are they with their naïveté to want forever but that is exactly what they are. Past the stage and the blinding lights and the adoring fans and the seducing lure of fame and success; Infinite is forever.
Before they go on stage, they all hold hands. Myungsoo's nails pierce Hoya's palm and Sungyeol almost cuts off Dongwooo's circulation and he pays it forward on Sungjong’s hand. Sunggyu grips Woohyun's fingers, a beat passes after their eyes meet and he smiles.
Woohyun smiles back and once the song stars, Sunggyu's voice is the thing of dreams made reality.
*
a/n: So first Infinite fic. Been into these boys since their debut but haven't been able to write fic for them until now. Any Inspirits watching the comm?