[infinite] storage rooms, electric guitars, and banana milk; myungsoo/hyunsoo; pg
Title: Storage Rooms, Electric Guitars, and Banana Milk
Pairing: Myungsoo/Hyunsoo (Shut Up! Flower Boy Band)
Rating: PG
Summary: Myungsoo meets Hyunsoo. They're alike, but different. There are accidents, debts, settlements -- and departures. Spoilers up until end of Episode 2 for Shut Up! Flower Boy Band.
Word count: ~3,400
storage rooms, electric guitars, and banana milk;;-
// myungsoo, hyunsoo, and finding a bit of themselves //
At first, Myungsoo’s not too bothered when he steps outside Infinite’s dorm and sees a group of ragged looking high school boys huddled around the tree in front of their apartment complex. After all, A-Pink do live in the same complex as them, and it’s not unnatural to have fans wait out in the cold just to catch a glimpse of their faces.
As he passes by them though, he’s less sure that they’re fans. They’re all wearing black jackets and ripped jeans, their hair is messy, and two of them have guitars strapped to their backs. They’re out of place in this tidy, busy part of Seoul.
It’s only when one of the boys lifts his head and looks in Myungsoo’s direction, a much too familiar smirk on his face, that Myungsoo feels a shiver run down his spine.
But before he can do anything, he’s being dragged by Sungyeol towards the van. When he cranes his head to look back, the boys are gone.
Myungsoo bumps into someone on the streets two weeks later, on the way back from the convenience store.
The store is just around the corner from their dorm, and even though he knows he’s not meant to be out, he’d had an inexplicable craving for banana milk, so he’d snuck out past Sunggyu’s watchful eyes after evening dance practise. Plus, he’d rather use that excuse than saying he wanted some time away from them.
Myungsoo’s concentrating on trying to stab the straw through the foil top of the container when he crashes into someone, sending them hurtling to the ground.
“Ah, sorry,” he apologises, walking off without a second thought.
“Hey, you,” he hears, and turns around. It’s a boy around Myungsoo’s build, crouched into the ground, head down. The boy dusts his pants and hands off, then brushes the dirt off a black guitar case, and stands up to glare at Myungsoo.
There’s a beat of silence.
“You--” Myungsoo chokes out, banana milk dropping to the floor.
“Me?” the boy responds, staring Myungsoo straight in the eyes. His hair is parted to one side, in the same cut and style as Myungsoo’s. His lips are the same full shape, and his eyes have the same piercing quality as Myungsoo’s.
Actually, everything’s the same as Myungsoo’s. Everything is Myungsoo.
Myungsoo stares. His memory flashes back to the group of boys outside the dorm two weeks ago, to the eyes that had met his, and a similar chill runs through him. The boy smiles again, undeterred.
“Who...are you?” Myungsoo asks. This is strange. This is fucking strange. There’s a boy with his face standing in front of him, but it’s not him, and Myungsoo’s pretty fucking sure he doesn’t have a long lost twin, or a clone, for that matter.
“You must be L,” the boy in front of him -- with his face -- drawls, lips twitching into a smirk. “You’re that guy from Infinite, aren’t you?” He looks up to the sky, then back to Myungsoo, and cracks his neck, as if sizing him up. There’s a quiet anger in his eyes. “You knocked my guitar over.”
“Yes, but,” Myungsoo says, trying to remain calm, “tell me who you are first. Are you a stalker? You were there in front of our dorm that time too, why?”
The boy narrows his eyes. “I’m Lee Hyunsoo, Jungsang high school, second form, class three. I've never been to your dorm.”
“Don't lie”, Myungsoo says. “That...two weeks ago, with the tree in the courtyard.”
Hyunsoo scoffs and rolls his eyes. “Byung--my bandmate’s muse must live in your building. Whoever we were stalking, it wasn’t you. Don’t flatter yourself.”
“Then how do you know my name?”
Hyunsoo narrows his eyes. “It’s pretty hard to miss my own face plastered everywhere with the name ‘L’ written all over it. That’s not your real name, is it? Tell me your real name.”
“Kim Myungsoo,” Myungsoo says, edging away from Hyunsoo. He stumbles over the puddle of banana milk spilt on the pavement. “You...why do you look like me?”
“Hell if I know,” Hyunsoo says impatiently, crouching down. He slowly unzips the guitar case. “Not my fault if the guy up there decided to give us the same face. And are you sure it’s not you who looks like me?”
“But,” Myungsoo says, frowning. Hyunsoo makes a valid point. In any case, Myungsoo’s not sure why he’s still here, arguing with his doppleganger -- or why he even has a doppleganger in the first place. He’s pretty sure he should get back to the dorm before the fans track him down, or before Sunggyu comes back from vocal lessons and grills him alive. He breathes out.
“Okay, but--”
“--hey, Kim Myungsoo, if my guitar’s damaged, you’re dead.”
Hyunsoo takes his guitar out of its case, and examines it. He wiggles the tuning pegs, then looks at the white paintwork of the body and runs his hands down the neck.
“Ah, fuck, the neck’s fractured.” Hyunsoo zips the guitar back up, and slings it across his back. He glares at Myungsoo. “Fucking idiot, you broke my guitar. I can’t play with it like this. What are you gonna do about it?”
Myungsoo stands there, gaping. He’s still trying to process the entire bizarre situation. The next thing he knows, Hyunsoo’s thrust a hand’s under his face.
“What--”
“--gimme your phone. I’ll contact you for repair fees. I’ve had experience chasing up unpaid debts, so if I call you and you don’t reply you’re really dead, got it?”
Two minutes later, Hyunsoo pushes Myungsoo’s phone back into Myungsoo’s trouser pocket, walking off into the distance with a salute. It dawns on Myungsoo that he’s given his phone number away to a total stranger -- who looks exactly like him.
By the time he comes to his senses, Hyunsoo’s out of sight, and the banana milk’s evaporated to a sticky stain on the pavement.
Myungsoo’s not expecting the call when it comes. Infinite’s just about to board the plane to Japan when Myungsoo’s phone vibrates in his pocket -- an unknown caller. Myungsoo doesn’t usually pick up unknown calls. Ninety five percent of the time, they’re fans, and the other five percent are telemarketers, but all of a sudden Hyunsoo’s threat rings in his ears and he hurriedly picks up his phone.
“Hello?” he says, walking through the boarding gates and through the tunnel.
“Kim Myungsoo, know who I am?” The voice is familiar -- it’s his own voice, or rather, a very similar voice -- Hyunsoo’s. Myungsoo grimaces.
“Lee Hyunsoo.”
“You owe me a grand total of 250,000 won.”
Myungsoo’s sits down in his seat on the plane. He frowns. “That much?”
“Of course it’s that’s much, the neck’s half broken. Get it to me by today, Mr. Idol, I don’t care how busy you are.”
“I can’t,” Myungsoo explains. “I’m on a plane. I won’t be in Korea.”
“Whatever. Wire the money to me. I’ll text you my bank account details.”
The line goes dead. Myungsoo stares at his phone in disbelief. It vibrates a second later, and a text message from Hyunsoo comes through.
“Who’re you texting?” Sungyeol asks, sinking into the seat next to him and peering over his shoulder. Myungsoo jumps slightly and clicks his phone off, slipping it back into his pocket.
“It’s no one.”
Sungyeol shrugs and puts his headphones over his ears.
Myungsoo means to wire the money, really. He’s not a person that goes back on his agreements, but he forgets. They’re too busy in Japan, promoting their Japanese release, performing on music shows, barely getting enough time to eat and cram in a few hours of sleep before repeating the entire process.
So when they get back to Seoul, and Myungsoo can use his phone without roaming charges again, he switches on his phone, sees the forgotten text, and groans to himself. The van pulls into their apartment carpark and they’re all about to head up when Myungsoo spots a familiar figure, guitar and all, leaning against the pillar.
“I have to...do something,” he says, stepping out of the van. Sunggyu shoots him a quizzical glance. “It’s okay, I’ll be up in five minutes. Go up without me.”
When he’s sure the members are gone, Myungsoo walks towards the pillar. He stands in front of the figure. The figure looks up, eyes bloodshot.
“Myungsoo.”
Myungsoo sighs. “Look, I’m sorry, I forgot about the money, I’ll pay the repair fee, so--”
“--it’s not about the repair fee.” Hyunsoo’s voice is a bit unstable. Myungsoo quietens down. “My parents’ nightclub got shut down. I need a place to stay.”
Myungsoo purses his lips. This is totally out of the blue. “What about your other friends?”
Hyunsoo looks up at Myungsoo, an intense, interrogative gaze. There’s a pause, and then he lowers his head and looks away from Myungsoo. “Our band leader’s dead. The others are mourning. I can’t burden them at a time like this.”
“I’m...sorry for your loss,” Myungsoo murmurs. He’s not sure how to deal with situations like this. He does understand where Hyunsoo’s coming from, but all the same it’s too irrational for Hyunsoo to expect him, with a life centered around control and schedules and deadlines, to do anything. He makes a frustrated sound.
“Why are you asking me? I don’t know you. We just...look incredibly alike. I don’t have my own property. I live with six other guys and a manager. Does this make sense to you?”
Hyunsoo laughs bitterly. “When has the world ever made sense?”
“Don’t you think this is a bit too shameless?”
“Who can afford pride when you don’t even have a roof over your head. Please. I’ll waive the repair fee.”
Myungsoo sighs and rubs the back of his neck. If it was anyone else, he’d have cut them off without a second thought, but it seems a bit harsh to send someone with the same face as himself to starve out in the cold. It would be, on a twisted level, like putting himself through that torture, and Myungsoo’s not sure he wants that.
“Okay. Alright. We have an unused storage room on the basement level. There’s a spare mattress too. You can sleep there.”
So, unbeknownst to the other six members of Infinite and their manager, a visual carbon copy of Myungsoo, a guitarist by the name of Lee Hyunsoo, has come to reside in their storage room.
Just out of courtesy, Myungsoo checks up on Hyunsoo whenever he has a bit of room to breathe, a bit of a break from dance practise or script rehearsals, but he doesn’t admit he’s starting to enjoy sneaking down to basement level after dance practise and collapsing on the mattress in the storage room.
Admittedly, the strange feeling whenever he sees Hyunsoo hasn’t quite worn out for him yet. It’s both fascinating and incredibly unnerving to talk to Hyunsoo -- it’s like talking to himself, but someone else. Hyunsoo’s closed off, but in a different way to Myungsoo. Myungsoo would never so casually throw around the language Hyunsoo comes up with.
“So those fucking bastards killed him and covered it up with a traffic accident. I wanna make those bastards suffer for what they did, but Jihyuk...” Hyunsoo sighs, gritting his teeth. “Anyway. Eye Candy just have to beat them at the rock festival. That’s our revenge.”
Myungsoo raises an eyebrow from where he’s lying on the mattress. The storage room’s dark, the only light coming only from a lightbulb dangling from the ceiling. “Well, it’s good you’re not going around beating people up.”
“Why? Their bastard friend’s still alive. He should be dead for what he did to Byunghee. Not that I actually liked Byunghee at first, but he’s one of us, you know?”
“Yeah, well, justice always favour the rich. It wouldn’t do you any good to get involved. I’m pretty sure you can’t play the guitar in jail,” Myungsoo says, sighing. Hyunsoo’s been through more trouble in the past month than he has in his entire life. It’s difficult to relate to someone whose life is so different to his. “You know, I’ve never been in a real fistfight...although there were a few trainees I wanted to beat up.”
Hyunsoo looks at the ground and chuckles. “It’s not that great. It hurts like fuck getting punched in the face.”
“I would expect.” Myungsoo smirks. He rolls over to face Hyunsoo. “Anyway, why would you call your band Eye Candy? It sounds so tacky.”
Hyunsoo hits him on the arm, hard, eyeing him disdainfully. “And why would you call yourself L? It’s the stupidest stage name I’ve ever heard.”
"It's from a manga," Myungsoo replies lamely. Hyunsoo’s still staring at him, eyes narrowed in the same expression that Myungsoo uses on Sungyeol whenever he does something questionable. Myungsoo stares back, then raises his hands. “I liked manga at the time, okay. Plus, it lets me be someone else onstage. I like it that way.”
“You’re so strange. Just be yourself.”
Myungsoo lets out a bark of laughter. “And you’re saying you’re always you?”
Hyunsoo nods, straight-faced. “Most of the time. I live simply. For people like me, there’s not really any other way to live.” He stretches and absentmindedly strikes a chord on the guitar resting on his lap. “At least, I don’t put on airs and pretend to be someone I’m not.”
“No, you don’t understand.” Myungsoo rolls over and puts his chin in his hands. “It’s different for us. We all need to be something different for the cameras. It’s what our company said too. Myungsoo’s not interesting, but L is.”
“You gotta stop thinking so much,” Hyunsoo says, putting the guitar aside and staring Myungsoo in the eyes. “What’s the use of thinking? Just do what you like. Live by your instinct.”
Myungsoo’s not quite sure how.
The next day off for Myungsoo comes just a month before Infinite’s first concert. Sunggyu and Woohyun are at rehearsals for their musical, Sungjong and Sungyeol are filming for a variety show, and even though they have the day off, Myungsoo knows Hoya and Dongwoo are in the dance room rehearsing for their duet stage. Myungsoo takes this chance to drag Hyunsoo to the park behind their complex. Hyunsoo lies down on the park bench, resting his head on Myungsoo’s lap.
“I have to choose a solo stage for our concert,” Myungsoo says, frustrated. “I don’t know. I’m not particularly good at anything. Just average.”
“How about a rock stage? You know guitar.”
Myungsoo stares stares at his hands and flexes his fingers. “I’ve never played an electric guitar before. Only acoustic.”
Hyunsoo takes Myungsoo’s hands in his. Myungsoo flinches, tensing up, and Hyunsoo frowns and whacks him on the side.
“Keep still. I could teach you. I know more than a thing or two.” The skin on Hyunsoo’s hands is rough and calloused from the steel strings of the electric guitar. There’s a bandage wrapped around his left index finger. Myungsoo’s hands are too soft in comparison.
“Or you know,” Hyunsoo chuckles, “I could go up there instead of you. No one would know.”
Myungsoo scoffs. “They’d get suspicious if I played too well. Plus, you don’t have an idol aura at all. You look just like a grungy street boy. With a nice face, of course.”
“You’re right,” Hyunsoo says, eyes dropping down, “we might look the same, but we’re nothing alike. Different levels, you and me.”
Myungsoo’s silent. He thinks back to Hyunsoo’s restrained anger, his secret ambition, the little, minute problems he has with his band he lets slip in their conversations but never acknowledges, and thinks that maybe they’re not as different as Hyunsoo makes them out to be.
“Anyway, how about it? Rock stage? If it doesn’t work out, I’ll always swap with you on the day.”
Myungsoo pauses. “I’ll think about it.”
“Are you okay?” Dongwoo asks Myungsoo in the dorm that evening. “You’re a bit...strange recently.”
Myungsoo snaps out of his reverie. “What do you mean strange?”
“Well,” Dongwoo muses, “I might be a deep sleeper, but you’ve been leaving the room too much at night. Also, you called Woohyun a jerk the other day. I think he’s still mad at you.”
Myungsoo muffles a sigh. He’d gotten so used to Hyunsoo’s speech patterns that it’d slipped out by accident while he was fighting with Woohyun. His mind goes back to Hyunsoo’s offer.
“Hyung.”
“Hmm?”
“What do you think about a rock stage for my solo?”
The storage room turns into Myungsoo’s guitar lesson room. Hyunsoo teaches Myungsoo some riffs, power chords and progressions, which he picks up at lightning speed. After seven lessons, Myungsoo’s mastered his solo song. Even Hyunsoo seems impressed.
“I must be a good teacher,” Hyunsoo says, smirking. Myungsoo pushes him out of his chair onto the mattress and glares at him. “Okay, you’re a good student too.”
“For a good teacher, I haven’t actually seen you perform once yet,” Myungsoo remarks as Hyunsoo unplugs the amp. “Don’t you think this student should witness your skills?”
“I’ve played for you plenty of times. But if you want to hear the whole band...” Hyunsoo rubs the back of his neck. “Eye Candy’s competition is this Thursday. It’d be good if you could come.”
On Thursday, Infinite have a filming for a variety show, then a special music show schedule, followed by a live radio broadcast. They’re kept busy from 6am until 2am -- twenty straight hours. Myungsoo texts Hyunsoo his apologies, but they both knew he wasn’t going to make it anyway.
By the time Myungsoo gets back to the dorm, he’s too tired to do anything but sleep.
The next time Myungsoo knocks on the storage room door, there’s no answer. That in itself isn’t strange: sometimes Hyunsoo goes out at odd hours of the night with his bandmates and sleeps at their places, or sometimes, very rarely, meets a girl and spends the night. Myungsoo’s heard it all before; he lives vicariously through Hyunsoo. The thing is, Hyunsoo isn’t responding to his texts or calls, and he always responds.
The door of the room’s slightly ajar. Myungsoo pushes it open. The room’s empty. There’s a note lying on the mattress, and Myungsoo knows without reading it that Hyunsoo’s gone.
Kim Myungsoo, L, whatever you wanna be called -- thanks for the room, I appreciate it.
I don’t know if you know, but we won. Eye Candy have signed with H&M, and they’re giving us housing, so I can get out of your way (they took away our phones too, is that even legal?). Ice Prince of Infinite, L, is a busy person; even though we look the same, we’re on completely different levels, aren’t we?
Anyway, I’m gonna be number one someday, so you better own that solo stage, or you’re dead, got it?
Myungsoo scans the room. The only thing he’s left behind is a white electric guitar propped up in the corner, and a bottle of banana milk next to it. There’s another note stuck onto the guitar in Hyunsoo’s scrawly handwriting.
We finally got enough funding for a new drumkit -- and a new guitar. Here, take this as rent. And a, uh, replacement for the spilt milk. Maybe don't drink it, I think it's expired.
Myungsoo grins. He flips the guitar over in his hands. There’s still an uneven bump, a slight crack where the neck’s been superglued together. Hyunsoo never got it fixed properly after all.
So just like that, Hyunsoo disappears from Myungsoo’s life, as easily as he had entered.
It’s doesn’t turn his world upside down, and Myungsoo doesn’t feel emptier now he’s gone, but there’s a bit of sadness lingering in Myungsoo’s chest. He was never particularly interested before, but now he wants to know them: the members of Eye Candy, Hyunsoo’s closest friends. He’ll probably never get to.
“And next up...L’s solo stage!”
The lights go on. There are thirty seconds to go before Myungsoo’s solo stage at Infinite’s first concert.
Myungsoo grips his -- Hyunsoo’s -- guitar. Just for that brief moment before he steps onstage, he feels Hyunsoo standing next to him, tongue poking out of his mouth micheviously, a comforting hand on Myungsoo’s shoulder. Myungsoo smiles. His solo stage is a dual effort, after all.
Hyunsoo hasn’t completely left him. Hyunsoo’s onstage with him right now.
a/n: happy birthday saracupcaked i sincerely apologise for this mess but ilu and your myungsoo stanning HAVE MY LOVE ♥♥♥♥♥
Pairing: Myungsoo/Hyunsoo (Shut Up! Flower Boy Band)
Rating: PG
Summary: Myungsoo meets Hyunsoo. They're alike, but different. There are accidents, debts, settlements -- and departures. Spoilers up until end of Episode 2 for Shut Up! Flower Boy Band.
Word count: ~3,400
storage rooms, electric guitars, and banana milk;;-
// myungsoo, hyunsoo, and finding a bit of themselves //
At first, Myungsoo’s not too bothered when he steps outside Infinite’s dorm and sees a group of ragged looking high school boys huddled around the tree in front of their apartment complex. After all, A-Pink do live in the same complex as them, and it’s not unnatural to have fans wait out in the cold just to catch a glimpse of their faces.
As he passes by them though, he’s less sure that they’re fans. They’re all wearing black jackets and ripped jeans, their hair is messy, and two of them have guitars strapped to their backs. They’re out of place in this tidy, busy part of Seoul.
It’s only when one of the boys lifts his head and looks in Myungsoo’s direction, a much too familiar smirk on his face, that Myungsoo feels a shiver run down his spine.
But before he can do anything, he’s being dragged by Sungyeol towards the van. When he cranes his head to look back, the boys are gone.
Myungsoo bumps into someone on the streets two weeks later, on the way back from the convenience store.
The store is just around the corner from their dorm, and even though he knows he’s not meant to be out, he’d had an inexplicable craving for banana milk, so he’d snuck out past Sunggyu’s watchful eyes after evening dance practise. Plus, he’d rather use that excuse than saying he wanted some time away from them.
Myungsoo’s concentrating on trying to stab the straw through the foil top of the container when he crashes into someone, sending them hurtling to the ground.
“Ah, sorry,” he apologises, walking off without a second thought.
“Hey, you,” he hears, and turns around. It’s a boy around Myungsoo’s build, crouched into the ground, head down. The boy dusts his pants and hands off, then brushes the dirt off a black guitar case, and stands up to glare at Myungsoo.
There’s a beat of silence.
“You--” Myungsoo chokes out, banana milk dropping to the floor.
“Me?” the boy responds, staring Myungsoo straight in the eyes. His hair is parted to one side, in the same cut and style as Myungsoo’s. His lips are the same full shape, and his eyes have the same piercing quality as Myungsoo’s.
Actually, everything’s the same as Myungsoo’s. Everything is Myungsoo.
Myungsoo stares. His memory flashes back to the group of boys outside the dorm two weeks ago, to the eyes that had met his, and a similar chill runs through him. The boy smiles again, undeterred.
“Who...are you?” Myungsoo asks. This is strange. This is fucking strange. There’s a boy with his face standing in front of him, but it’s not him, and Myungsoo’s pretty fucking sure he doesn’t have a long lost twin, or a clone, for that matter.
“You must be L,” the boy in front of him -- with his face -- drawls, lips twitching into a smirk. “You’re that guy from Infinite, aren’t you?” He looks up to the sky, then back to Myungsoo, and cracks his neck, as if sizing him up. There’s a quiet anger in his eyes. “You knocked my guitar over.”
“Yes, but,” Myungsoo says, trying to remain calm, “tell me who you are first. Are you a stalker? You were there in front of our dorm that time too, why?”
The boy narrows his eyes. “I’m Lee Hyunsoo, Jungsang high school, second form, class three. I've never been to your dorm.”
“Don't lie”, Myungsoo says. “That...two weeks ago, with the tree in the courtyard.”
Hyunsoo scoffs and rolls his eyes. “Byung--my bandmate’s muse must live in your building. Whoever we were stalking, it wasn’t you. Don’t flatter yourself.”
“Then how do you know my name?”
Hyunsoo narrows his eyes. “It’s pretty hard to miss my own face plastered everywhere with the name ‘L’ written all over it. That’s not your real name, is it? Tell me your real name.”
“Kim Myungsoo,” Myungsoo says, edging away from Hyunsoo. He stumbles over the puddle of banana milk spilt on the pavement. “You...why do you look like me?”
“Hell if I know,” Hyunsoo says impatiently, crouching down. He slowly unzips the guitar case. “Not my fault if the guy up there decided to give us the same face. And are you sure it’s not you who looks like me?”
“But,” Myungsoo says, frowning. Hyunsoo makes a valid point. In any case, Myungsoo’s not sure why he’s still here, arguing with his doppleganger -- or why he even has a doppleganger in the first place. He’s pretty sure he should get back to the dorm before the fans track him down, or before Sunggyu comes back from vocal lessons and grills him alive. He breathes out.
“Okay, but--”
“--hey, Kim Myungsoo, if my guitar’s damaged, you’re dead.”
Hyunsoo takes his guitar out of its case, and examines it. He wiggles the tuning pegs, then looks at the white paintwork of the body and runs his hands down the neck.
“Ah, fuck, the neck’s fractured.” Hyunsoo zips the guitar back up, and slings it across his back. He glares at Myungsoo. “Fucking idiot, you broke my guitar. I can’t play with it like this. What are you gonna do about it?”
Myungsoo stands there, gaping. He’s still trying to process the entire bizarre situation. The next thing he knows, Hyunsoo’s thrust a hand’s under his face.
“What--”
“--gimme your phone. I’ll contact you for repair fees. I’ve had experience chasing up unpaid debts, so if I call you and you don’t reply you’re really dead, got it?”
Two minutes later, Hyunsoo pushes Myungsoo’s phone back into Myungsoo’s trouser pocket, walking off into the distance with a salute. It dawns on Myungsoo that he’s given his phone number away to a total stranger -- who looks exactly like him.
By the time he comes to his senses, Hyunsoo’s out of sight, and the banana milk’s evaporated to a sticky stain on the pavement.
Myungsoo’s not expecting the call when it comes. Infinite’s just about to board the plane to Japan when Myungsoo’s phone vibrates in his pocket -- an unknown caller. Myungsoo doesn’t usually pick up unknown calls. Ninety five percent of the time, they’re fans, and the other five percent are telemarketers, but all of a sudden Hyunsoo’s threat rings in his ears and he hurriedly picks up his phone.
“Hello?” he says, walking through the boarding gates and through the tunnel.
“Kim Myungsoo, know who I am?” The voice is familiar -- it’s his own voice, or rather, a very similar voice -- Hyunsoo’s. Myungsoo grimaces.
“Lee Hyunsoo.”
“You owe me a grand total of 250,000 won.”
Myungsoo’s sits down in his seat on the plane. He frowns. “That much?”
“Of course it’s that’s much, the neck’s half broken. Get it to me by today, Mr. Idol, I don’t care how busy you are.”
“I can’t,” Myungsoo explains. “I’m on a plane. I won’t be in Korea.”
“Whatever. Wire the money to me. I’ll text you my bank account details.”
The line goes dead. Myungsoo stares at his phone in disbelief. It vibrates a second later, and a text message from Hyunsoo comes through.
“Who’re you texting?” Sungyeol asks, sinking into the seat next to him and peering over his shoulder. Myungsoo jumps slightly and clicks his phone off, slipping it back into his pocket.
“It’s no one.”
Sungyeol shrugs and puts his headphones over his ears.
Myungsoo means to wire the money, really. He’s not a person that goes back on his agreements, but he forgets. They’re too busy in Japan, promoting their Japanese release, performing on music shows, barely getting enough time to eat and cram in a few hours of sleep before repeating the entire process.
So when they get back to Seoul, and Myungsoo can use his phone without roaming charges again, he switches on his phone, sees the forgotten text, and groans to himself. The van pulls into their apartment carpark and they’re all about to head up when Myungsoo spots a familiar figure, guitar and all, leaning against the pillar.
“I have to...do something,” he says, stepping out of the van. Sunggyu shoots him a quizzical glance. “It’s okay, I’ll be up in five minutes. Go up without me.”
When he’s sure the members are gone, Myungsoo walks towards the pillar. He stands in front of the figure. The figure looks up, eyes bloodshot.
“Myungsoo.”
Myungsoo sighs. “Look, I’m sorry, I forgot about the money, I’ll pay the repair fee, so--”
“--it’s not about the repair fee.” Hyunsoo’s voice is a bit unstable. Myungsoo quietens down. “My parents’ nightclub got shut down. I need a place to stay.”
Myungsoo purses his lips. This is totally out of the blue. “What about your other friends?”
Hyunsoo looks up at Myungsoo, an intense, interrogative gaze. There’s a pause, and then he lowers his head and looks away from Myungsoo. “Our band leader’s dead. The others are mourning. I can’t burden them at a time like this.”
“I’m...sorry for your loss,” Myungsoo murmurs. He’s not sure how to deal with situations like this. He does understand where Hyunsoo’s coming from, but all the same it’s too irrational for Hyunsoo to expect him, with a life centered around control and schedules and deadlines, to do anything. He makes a frustrated sound.
“Why are you asking me? I don’t know you. We just...look incredibly alike. I don’t have my own property. I live with six other guys and a manager. Does this make sense to you?”
Hyunsoo laughs bitterly. “When has the world ever made sense?”
“Don’t you think this is a bit too shameless?”
“Who can afford pride when you don’t even have a roof over your head. Please. I’ll waive the repair fee.”
Myungsoo sighs and rubs the back of his neck. If it was anyone else, he’d have cut them off without a second thought, but it seems a bit harsh to send someone with the same face as himself to starve out in the cold. It would be, on a twisted level, like putting himself through that torture, and Myungsoo’s not sure he wants that.
“Okay. Alright. We have an unused storage room on the basement level. There’s a spare mattress too. You can sleep there.”
So, unbeknownst to the other six members of Infinite and their manager, a visual carbon copy of Myungsoo, a guitarist by the name of Lee Hyunsoo, has come to reside in their storage room.
Just out of courtesy, Myungsoo checks up on Hyunsoo whenever he has a bit of room to breathe, a bit of a break from dance practise or script rehearsals, but he doesn’t admit he’s starting to enjoy sneaking down to basement level after dance practise and collapsing on the mattress in the storage room.
Admittedly, the strange feeling whenever he sees Hyunsoo hasn’t quite worn out for him yet. It’s both fascinating and incredibly unnerving to talk to Hyunsoo -- it’s like talking to himself, but someone else. Hyunsoo’s closed off, but in a different way to Myungsoo. Myungsoo would never so casually throw around the language Hyunsoo comes up with.
“So those fucking bastards killed him and covered it up with a traffic accident. I wanna make those bastards suffer for what they did, but Jihyuk...” Hyunsoo sighs, gritting his teeth. “Anyway. Eye Candy just have to beat them at the rock festival. That’s our revenge.”
Myungsoo raises an eyebrow from where he’s lying on the mattress. The storage room’s dark, the only light coming only from a lightbulb dangling from the ceiling. “Well, it’s good you’re not going around beating people up.”
“Why? Their bastard friend’s still alive. He should be dead for what he did to Byunghee. Not that I actually liked Byunghee at first, but he’s one of us, you know?”
“Yeah, well, justice always favour the rich. It wouldn’t do you any good to get involved. I’m pretty sure you can’t play the guitar in jail,” Myungsoo says, sighing. Hyunsoo’s been through more trouble in the past month than he has in his entire life. It’s difficult to relate to someone whose life is so different to his. “You know, I’ve never been in a real fistfight...although there were a few trainees I wanted to beat up.”
Hyunsoo looks at the ground and chuckles. “It’s not that great. It hurts like fuck getting punched in the face.”
“I would expect.” Myungsoo smirks. He rolls over to face Hyunsoo. “Anyway, why would you call your band Eye Candy? It sounds so tacky.”
Hyunsoo hits him on the arm, hard, eyeing him disdainfully. “And why would you call yourself L? It’s the stupidest stage name I’ve ever heard.”
"It's from a manga," Myungsoo replies lamely. Hyunsoo’s still staring at him, eyes narrowed in the same expression that Myungsoo uses on Sungyeol whenever he does something questionable. Myungsoo stares back, then raises his hands. “I liked manga at the time, okay. Plus, it lets me be someone else onstage. I like it that way.”
“You’re so strange. Just be yourself.”
Myungsoo lets out a bark of laughter. “And you’re saying you’re always you?”
Hyunsoo nods, straight-faced. “Most of the time. I live simply. For people like me, there’s not really any other way to live.” He stretches and absentmindedly strikes a chord on the guitar resting on his lap. “At least, I don’t put on airs and pretend to be someone I’m not.”
“No, you don’t understand.” Myungsoo rolls over and puts his chin in his hands. “It’s different for us. We all need to be something different for the cameras. It’s what our company said too. Myungsoo’s not interesting, but L is.”
“You gotta stop thinking so much,” Hyunsoo says, putting the guitar aside and staring Myungsoo in the eyes. “What’s the use of thinking? Just do what you like. Live by your instinct.”
Myungsoo’s not quite sure how.
The next day off for Myungsoo comes just a month before Infinite’s first concert. Sunggyu and Woohyun are at rehearsals for their musical, Sungjong and Sungyeol are filming for a variety show, and even though they have the day off, Myungsoo knows Hoya and Dongwoo are in the dance room rehearsing for their duet stage. Myungsoo takes this chance to drag Hyunsoo to the park behind their complex. Hyunsoo lies down on the park bench, resting his head on Myungsoo’s lap.
“I have to choose a solo stage for our concert,” Myungsoo says, frustrated. “I don’t know. I’m not particularly good at anything. Just average.”
“How about a rock stage? You know guitar.”
Myungsoo stares stares at his hands and flexes his fingers. “I’ve never played an electric guitar before. Only acoustic.”
Hyunsoo takes Myungsoo’s hands in his. Myungsoo flinches, tensing up, and Hyunsoo frowns and whacks him on the side.
“Keep still. I could teach you. I know more than a thing or two.” The skin on Hyunsoo’s hands is rough and calloused from the steel strings of the electric guitar. There’s a bandage wrapped around his left index finger. Myungsoo’s hands are too soft in comparison.
“Or you know,” Hyunsoo chuckles, “I could go up there instead of you. No one would know.”
Myungsoo scoffs. “They’d get suspicious if I played too well. Plus, you don’t have an idol aura at all. You look just like a grungy street boy. With a nice face, of course.”
“You’re right,” Hyunsoo says, eyes dropping down, “we might look the same, but we’re nothing alike. Different levels, you and me.”
Myungsoo’s silent. He thinks back to Hyunsoo’s restrained anger, his secret ambition, the little, minute problems he has with his band he lets slip in their conversations but never acknowledges, and thinks that maybe they’re not as different as Hyunsoo makes them out to be.
“Anyway, how about it? Rock stage? If it doesn’t work out, I’ll always swap with you on the day.”
Myungsoo pauses. “I’ll think about it.”
“Are you okay?” Dongwoo asks Myungsoo in the dorm that evening. “You’re a bit...strange recently.”
Myungsoo snaps out of his reverie. “What do you mean strange?”
“Well,” Dongwoo muses, “I might be a deep sleeper, but you’ve been leaving the room too much at night. Also, you called Woohyun a jerk the other day. I think he’s still mad at you.”
Myungsoo muffles a sigh. He’d gotten so used to Hyunsoo’s speech patterns that it’d slipped out by accident while he was fighting with Woohyun. His mind goes back to Hyunsoo’s offer.
“Hyung.”
“Hmm?”
“What do you think about a rock stage for my solo?”
The storage room turns into Myungsoo’s guitar lesson room. Hyunsoo teaches Myungsoo some riffs, power chords and progressions, which he picks up at lightning speed. After seven lessons, Myungsoo’s mastered his solo song. Even Hyunsoo seems impressed.
“I must be a good teacher,” Hyunsoo says, smirking. Myungsoo pushes him out of his chair onto the mattress and glares at him. “Okay, you’re a good student too.”
“For a good teacher, I haven’t actually seen you perform once yet,” Myungsoo remarks as Hyunsoo unplugs the amp. “Don’t you think this student should witness your skills?”
“I’ve played for you plenty of times. But if you want to hear the whole band...” Hyunsoo rubs the back of his neck. “Eye Candy’s competition is this Thursday. It’d be good if you could come.”
On Thursday, Infinite have a filming for a variety show, then a special music show schedule, followed by a live radio broadcast. They’re kept busy from 6am until 2am -- twenty straight hours. Myungsoo texts Hyunsoo his apologies, but they both knew he wasn’t going to make it anyway.
By the time Myungsoo gets back to the dorm, he’s too tired to do anything but sleep.
The next time Myungsoo knocks on the storage room door, there’s no answer. That in itself isn’t strange: sometimes Hyunsoo goes out at odd hours of the night with his bandmates and sleeps at their places, or sometimes, very rarely, meets a girl and spends the night. Myungsoo’s heard it all before; he lives vicariously through Hyunsoo. The thing is, Hyunsoo isn’t responding to his texts or calls, and he always responds.
The door of the room’s slightly ajar. Myungsoo pushes it open. The room’s empty. There’s a note lying on the mattress, and Myungsoo knows without reading it that Hyunsoo’s gone.
Kim Myungsoo, L, whatever you wanna be called -- thanks for the room, I appreciate it.
I don’t know if you know, but we won. Eye Candy have signed with H&M, and they’re giving us housing, so I can get out of your way (they took away our phones too, is that even legal?). Ice Prince of Infinite, L, is a busy person; even though we look the same, we’re on completely different levels, aren’t we?
Anyway, I’m gonna be number one someday, so you better own that solo stage, or you’re dead, got it?
Myungsoo scans the room. The only thing he’s left behind is a white electric guitar propped up in the corner, and a bottle of banana milk next to it. There’s another note stuck onto the guitar in Hyunsoo’s scrawly handwriting.
We finally got enough funding for a new drumkit -- and a new guitar. Here, take this as rent. And a, uh, replacement for the spilt milk. Maybe don't drink it, I think it's expired.
Myungsoo grins. He flips the guitar over in his hands. There’s still an uneven bump, a slight crack where the neck’s been superglued together. Hyunsoo never got it fixed properly after all.
So just like that, Hyunsoo disappears from Myungsoo’s life, as easily as he had entered.
It’s doesn’t turn his world upside down, and Myungsoo doesn’t feel emptier now he’s gone, but there’s a bit of sadness lingering in Myungsoo’s chest. He was never particularly interested before, but now he wants to know them: the members of Eye Candy, Hyunsoo’s closest friends. He’ll probably never get to.
“And next up...L’s solo stage!”
The lights go on. There are thirty seconds to go before Myungsoo’s solo stage at Infinite’s first concert.
Myungsoo grips his -- Hyunsoo’s -- guitar. Just for that brief moment before he steps onstage, he feels Hyunsoo standing next to him, tongue poking out of his mouth micheviously, a comforting hand on Myungsoo’s shoulder. Myungsoo smiles. His solo stage is a dual effort, after all.
Hyunsoo hasn’t completely left him. Hyunsoo’s onstage with him right now.
a/n: happy birthday saracupcaked i sincerely apologise for this mess but ilu and your myungsoo stanning HAVE MY LOVE ♥♥♥♥♥