[infinite] revolutions (and their discontents)
Title: revolutions (and their discontents)
Rating: r
Word count: 1670 / 3340
Summary: There are always lines that need to be drawn.
revolutions (and their discontents)
Go, go, go, said the bird: human kind
Cannot bear very much reality.
Time past and time future
What might have been and what has been
Point to one end, which is always present.
t.s. eliot, "burnt norton"
∞
1.
Dongwoo never tells anyone, but he almost fails his initial audition with Woolim. They ask him to stay behind after all the other candidates have left, and CEO Lee Joong Yeop taps at his clipboard with the end of a ballpoint pen. Dongwoo tries to ignore his painful lack of rhythm.
“You’re good,” he says finally. It sounds more like a sigh than anything else, a tinge of regret, “you’re just not great.”
“I can do better,” Dongwoo finds himself saying, “I’ll get better. I can sing as well, I don’t just--”
This is where the narration splits. In reality, of course, he’d been told that he’d get one shot at this, that Lee Joong Yeop wanted to see some serious improvement in a month, that Dongwoo would be signed up for vocal lessons in the morning. Tablo had slapped him on the shoulder and Dongwoo had bowed and said his thanks, knees shaking, heart thudding, and escaped into the frosty air of evening. He’d stumbled into an alley and slid to the ground, pulled his legs flush against his chest, wrapped his hands under his thighs, cold seeping through the seat of his jeans, and victoriously shuddered out his tension.
But in his dreams, even years later, Lee Joong Yeop shakes his head and turns around and asks Dongwoo to leave and never come back in a voice that sounds oddly like Sunggyu’s.
“You will never be good enough,” Lee Joong Yeop always says.
Dongwoo believes it.
2 | 11
2.
They talk, sometimes. Sunggyu claims that Dongwoo needs to see a knee-therapist for an unresponsive recurring injury, and they camp out in a small family restaurant sipping Diet Cokes, hat brims pulled low over their faces more for the experience of hiding than out of actual necessity. No one knows who they are. Dongwoo isn’t convinced that’ll ever change, at this rate. It’s already been over a year.
Sunggyu blames it on Yeondo’s lack of cohesion, his carelessness, the practices he’s been skipping, his perpetual hoarseness. “He’s fucking up,” Sunggyu murmurs between admissions of discomfort and awkward shuffles. “This can’t last. We won’t make it like this.”
Dongwoo stays quiet. Sunggyu is full of relentless dissatisfaction with the present. But Dongwoo also remembers Sunggyu’s dreams of soft ballads and elaborate stages with Myungsoo on guitar, harmonizing with Kim Jongwan, and he’s pretty sure that’s not what their pop-rock dance team is going to be busy with. He wonders if Sunggyu will dislike the reality of debut just as much, if five years down the line they’ll be sitting there in scarves and face masks and equally as unhappy.
Sunggyu sometimes slides a foot against his sneaker, though and taps an even beat along his calf. Dongwoo’s worries melt away and he lets out a shuddering breath and stares out of the window, however far away it is, longing for the day when they’ll be too scared to be honest.
3 | 13
3.
Dongwoo’s not quite sure how it happens, but they start kissing after sharing chicken, squatting underneath shop awnings and park slides. “Come here,” Sunggyu says in a voice heavy with oil and grease, and Dongwoo does, curling his fingers in Sunggyu’s shirt, pressing back as hard as he gets. Sunggyu is intoxicating, dizzying, and Dongwoo thinks he’s grabbing into something that’s fading and pushes all the more relentlessly.
“Yeondo left last night. I’m going to be leader.”
Dongwoo’s not sure what that mean for them, him, or the group as a whole. He feels for Sunggyu’s chest and tries to remember the way Sunggyu reverberates when he’s hot and excited. He tries to remember everything about Sunggyu, the baby fat he’ll never have again, the new protrusions of his collarbones. This is time he can feel slipping away. “Okay.”
“I’m going to have to be strict.” A pause. “Stricter. No more sneaking out.”
Dongwoo laughs. That’s the least of their problems. He kisses Sunggyu and says as much and feels an arm behind his neck and it’s perfect for as long as Dongwoo pretends not to notice the metal bar digging into his shoulder or the reality of their surroundings and how cold seeps in through his boots and his socks and his heart.
4 | 14
4.
Sunggyu asks Dongwoo why he keeps a journal, why he has nightmares. Dongwoo can’t quite explain the art of compartmentalization to someone with so much inner strength. Sunggyu has to be enough not just for himself, not just for them, but for Infinite. He bites back a sigh and leans into a whisper and feels the touch of Sunggyu on his mouth, his eyelids. Sunggyu doesn’t ask why Dongwoo is crying. He doesn’t need to.
5 | 15
5.
The world shifts into winter, spring, summer. Sunggyu does, in fact, get stricter and sharper, but it all pays off one day with lights in their eyes while they remember to smile and track the camera around the periphery of the stage. It’s hard, and they are perfectly composed. Not a single crack. Lee Joong Yeop is impressed, Sunggyu says. He isn’t frowning. Dongwoo knows that means he’s just as proud.
They fuck two weeks after they debut, Sunggyu’s hands crawling helplessly up his shirt and not stopping, as they they typically did, at Dongwoo’s waistband. Dongwoo can’t do much else but moan and whine and scrabble at Sunggyu’s chest and shoulders and before he knows it, he’s naked, Sunggyu is naked, and everything is just a bit shatteringly difficult to contemplate.
“Condoms,” he gasps. It’s the one thing Dongwoo gets right. Sunggyu’s hands are warm, calloused, and it’s good, almost too good, everything about this is a helpless descent into anarchy. And Dongwoo doesn’t last, there’s no way he could, not with the unexpected onslaught of sheer physicality, but he still bends over afterwards, wincing at Sunggyu’s clumsiness, enjoying the eventual stretch and burn, toes curling in all of the right places, eyes fogging up, hands clenched in his bedsheets. Myungsoo is still in the studio. Sungjong is next door. The lights are low, but everyone probably knows.
That makes it better.
After Sunggyu comes and edges out, Dongwoo turns around to lean up and kiss the sweat off of Sunggyu’s forehead, his shoulders, the curve of his pectorals. When he gets to Sunggyu’s cheeks, he sees that Sunggyu’s eyes are unfocused and unclear. You’re not looking at me, Dongwoo thinks.
But. It’s fair. Dongwoo worships the expression of Sunggyu’s persistence. He’s encouraged it. He’s stayed behind after practice has ended, running hands over Sunggyu’s body in the studio, swallowing the thrust of desire and emphasizing Sunggyu’s lack of coordination and synchronization. He’d set down rules, priorities, and Sunggyu, for all his dictatorial decisions, respected that. Dongwoo wants them, not just the us.
Dongwoo’s half in love with Sunggyu, half in love with the fire underneath his skin. He doesn’t think it’s fair to lie, though, so he kisses Sunggyu with his eyes closed and says nothing at all.
6 | 16
6.
For his birthday, Dongwoo buys Sunggyu aftershave. It seems like nothing compared to the intensity of Sungyu’s weekly gifts, little plastic toys wrapped in tissue paper shoved into Dongwoo’s backpack, but when Dongwoo leans a bit too closely and smells it, him, on Sunggyu in public, he thinks it’s the most significant affirmation of ownership in the world, the best idea he’s ever had.
7 | 17
7.
“What do you want from me?”
Dongwoo knows he’s being irrational, that he can’t expect the ease of pre-debut and the highs of sexual experimentation to last forever. But. “I,” and Dongwoo can’t finish the sentence. He’s never been good with ephemeral things.
“I love you,” Sunggyu says. It sounds like hollow disappointment. How did we get here, how do we go back? “I just. Tell me what I should do.”
Dongwoo draws away and into himself and smiles and says it’s fine, it’s all really fine without saying much of anything at all.
8 | 19
8.
Sunggyu tries. He leaves toys in Dongwoo’s bag, little plastic eggs with curled notes and apologies. Dongwoo leaves his bag at home and leans into Sunggyu on camera, touches him more, smiles brightly. It’s a balance: the fans can’t know, but Dongwoo can’t stay away. It’s exactly what he always wanted.
The audience is a dark, tumultuous sea of half-hearted approval. It roars and tips direction at the slightest apparent rift in interband cohesion. Fans are afraid of getting hurt, Hoya said once. So they jump ship.
The irony doesn’t escape Dongwoo. “Fuck,” he thinks, and then kisses Sunggyu onstage during their encore performance of the last leg of their Seoul tour.
9
9.
His popularity ratchets up; Dongwoo’s praised for his showmanship, his good nature, his kindness. Woolim craftily manufactures a scandal between him and Kara’s Nicole to comfort fans that he’s normal and heterosexual. He sleeps with Sunggyu that night, tearing buttons off his designer shirt, sucking deep marks into his chest.
“You’re such a fake,” Sunggyu says, but it’s with a laugh and a groan and Dongwoo flicks his tongue around Sunggyu’s nipples. “Why would you--”
Dongwoo can’t separate performance from reality. The room feels darker. “I don’t know,” he gasps. “I want everything to last.” To be documented, to be verified.
Sunggyu moans and someone bangs on the door and Dongwoo thinks this is the sharpest compromise he can make. “Sing for me,” he says, frantically unbuckling Sunggyu’s jeans. “Your solo song.”
He does. It’s their own private concert, and Dongwoo feels the approval swirl even more tightly around his limbs. They are not alone, they never really have been, but somehow that makes it better, that makes it tenable, that introduces the future Dongwoo never could have otherwise imagined.
There’s applause. Sunggyu comes in his mouth. Dongwoo comes into Sunggyu’s hand and the world flickers.
10 | 20
10.
It’s easy, it’s too easy to live between poles, to mediate illusion with the honest sweat of time. Dongwoo does not bother with words, and Sunggyu does not lie: not to the camera, not to himself. They kiss each other onstage and in bed and when Sunggyu throws an arm around Sungjong and nuzzles Myungsoo’s ear, it’s to mediate, to carefully line the arena of pretense with excuses.
“I love you,” Sunggyu says quietly and loudly. And Dongwoo learns to believe both.
∞
11.
Woohyun quickly becomes everyone’s favorite; he flirts effortlessly with the stylists and trainers, fluttering his eyelashes helplessly at their vocal instructor, asking for different songs, for better songs, for new material to perfect.
“He’s really good,” Dongwoo hears Hoya say to Sunggyu one afternoon, towelling off soap in their tiny, grotty bathroom. “His dancing is just technically--”
“Don’t care,” Sunggyu says tonelessly.
“He’ll probably be picked for the final line-up.”
“Just our luck.”
The buzzer rings in the hall. Their three minutes are up. Thirteen boys sharing one sink necessitates a sort of compromise.
Dongwoo slumps against the door, hair sticking into his eyes, sweat plastering his shirt to his body. Listening to Sunggyu’s frank analysis is always exhausting, but when he turns around and sees Woohyun take a step back, eyes wide and helpless and completely honest, Dongwoo thinks he’s more tired that ever before, balancing regret with the sinking realization that his is not the only world revolving around Sunggyu’s approval.
When Sunggyu ambles out, washed and smelling clean and raw, Dongwoo leans a bit too close and whispers absolutely nothing into Sunggyu’s ear just to watch Woohyun withdraw into anomie.
2 | 12
12.
“You’ll regret it.”
Dongwoo picks at his teeth. Meat might be a treat, but it’s heavy in his mouth. “What do you mean?”
Myungsoo shrugs. “You just get one chance to decide who you’ll be. We all get one chance. Are you sure that this is who you want to be? You think you can keep it up?”
“Better to be giving,” he says, only meaning half of it. Myungsoo’s eyes are sharp and his mouth opens and Dongwoo thinks Myungsoo is about to call him out on one of the biggest and worst decisions of Dongwoo’s life; Myungsoo’s already made his, after all. He would know.
But Myungsoo smiles after a second and turns away and Dongwoo’s not sure if he’s infinitely relieved or not. “You deserve each other.”
2
13.
Dongwoo is there when Sunggyu’s voice is hoarse and he can’t sing anymore and is otherwise out of language. Woohyun pushes Sunggyu harder. And they fight, it comes down to blows, to icy shoulders and frozen faces. It’s past midnight and they’re running through Tablo’s choreography for the eighteenth time. Sunggyu still can’t manage to pull the steps together. Woohyun still can’t manage the art of being alone with other people.
Sunggyu brushes at Dongwoo’s arm. “Let’s get out of here. That asshole can practice on his own.”
“Look. It’s not hard. I can show you--”
Woohyun never turns off. His sweetness is a sickly, pervasive thing. Dongwoo slams the door behind him half for good measure, half because Sunggyu expects him to, and Sunggyu gives him a laugh and a helpless, honest sort of smile in return. It’s well deserved.
They walk home. Woohyun ambles into the dorm in the morning, bags under his eyes deep, smile permanently affixed to his face.
3
14.
Sunggyu opens his mouth a bit too widely when he sings. It’s unfairly sexual. Dongwoo’s not sure if he notices because of all of the mirrors, or if it’s because it’s obvious, if everyone notices, if everyone is always watching their leader for those kinds of intimate cues. Woohyun, at least, seems to.
But Dongwoo is vindicated by Woohyun’s inability to reframe his conception of reality. Because even if Woohyun stays behind to practice, staring at the rings of sweat lining Sunggyu’s shirt, he can never manage to say anything other than no or you’re doing it wrong, can I show you-- or will you help me arrange this song?
Dongwoo, on the other hand, knows how to distinguish work with the dream and with desire. He confesses to Sunggyu right outside of the dance studio in winter, snow and cold staining their hands red. Admissions and confusion bubble inside his chest: half for Sunggyu, half for the shadow Dongwoo sees and knows is Woohyun waiting and watching in the awning beneath the stairs ten feet away,
“Yes,” Sunggyu says, stepping forward, stepping in. “Yes.”
4
15.
Eventually, Woohyun dispenses with all pleasantries. It was really only a matter of time; Dongwoo’s just surprised that the act lasted as long as it did. He flips on for the camera and off for the rest of them and no one is really sure which is the real Nam Woohyun. Dongwoo thinks the importance of that division is severely overrated.
When the final two members to be added to their line-up amble naively into the studio one day, Hoya curses, Sunggyu points them in Woohyun’s direction, and Woohyun just sneers. It’s a bit late for honesty, though, and so even that doesn’t win Woohyun any favors.
“You know the routine. You can teach them.” It’s a throwback to Woohyun’s initial attempts at solidarity. If Dongwoo cared, even he’d think that the slur was a bit much, almost overly rude.
To compensate, Dongwoo kisses Sunggyu in the bathroom after practice. They have more time, now that they’ve been whittled down to seven. Sunggyu clings to Dongwoo’s hair and leaves bruises down his neck and everyone pretends uncomfortably that Dongwoo is a colossal klutz. When they’re done and back on even footing, Dongwoo presses warmth into Sunggyu’s mouth and buys a handful of scarves online.
5
16.
When they’ve cleaned up, Dongwoo pads out of the room to the kitchen for a bottle of water. Sungjong’s door is shut tightly, but, as expected, Woohyun is sitting in the living room, toying with his phone.
The flash is still on. Woohyun was probably taking pictures. “I was calling my dad,” he says, after a pause. Dongwoo finds that he’s slightly irritated by the obvious lie; Woohyun might be Infinite’s lead singer, but Dongwoo is still his hyung.
“Ah,” Dongwoo says. He tastes the syllable. “Do you want something to drink as well?”
“I’ll be okay. Wouldn’t want to look bloated in the morning.”
“You’ll be fine.” Another practiced line. “We’re done. Go sleep.”
“You too.”
Dongwoo turns away. For a second, he thinks that he and Woohyun aren’t terribly different, that Woohyun is also desperately insecure, dreaming of rejection, clinging to the fantasy of acceptance. That Woohyun still doesn’t know what he’s been doing wrong.
“You’re a great singer,” Dongwoo says finally, looking down at Woohyun and past everything he dislikes into everything he admires, everything that’s so similar to Sunggyu.
But whereas Sunggyu would have smiled weakly and motioned for Dongwoo to join him on the floor, exuding confidence and desire and a lazy sort of companionship, Woohyun brushes off Dongwoo’s attempts at reconnection with a useless flip of his hair and a distinct lack of empathy. “Thanks,” he replies remotely, getting to his feet. “See you in the morning.”
Dongwoo thinks that next time, he’ll advise against Sunggyu’s choking back sound when he comes.
6
17.
It’s evening, and Myungsoo decides to break out a pack of cards and play. “It’s been a while since we’ve done something as a team,” he says, and he’s right, so they fold cushions on the floor and lean forward and suddenly Woohyun jerks away.
They all stare. "Ah,” he says. “I just need a moment with Sunggyu. We’ll be back in a second.”
Sungyeol rolls his eyes. “Whatever. We’re starting without you.”
Sunggyu slowly gets to his feet and Dongwoo quells the urge to help. He looks exhausted--they all do--but Dongwoo watches the shutters of authority close over his face and thinks that he can’t even begin to imagine that inner strength it takes Sunggyu to keep it together.
Woohyun and Sunggyu retreat to their room, close the door, and Myungsoo deals a hand. And then stops.
“It stinks. I can smell it on you from across the room. Throw it away.” Woohyun’s voice is shrill. There’s no point in pretending that they can’t hear.
There’s a thud. Dongwoo winces and hopes that Sunggyu has enough presence of mind not to further agitate any of Woohyun’s injuries. Hoya coughs. “Should we do something about...?”
“They’ll figure it out,” and Myungsoo stares relentlessly at Dongwoo. “They’re friends.”
“Get the fuck over yourself, Woohyun. It was a present.”
“You’re ridiculous, you’re fucking ridiculous if you think you can keep something like that up without anyone--”
“Stop it.”
“He’s jealous,” Myungsoo says softly, eyes still trained on Dongwoo’s profile. “He’s always been jealous.”
Dongwoo knows that he could open the door and explain everything away and draw ever more lines and lies into their narrative. Sunggyu might even be okay with that. The other five might welcome it.
Instead, he gets to his feet. “Let’s get ice-cream,” he says as lightly as he can. “I’ll pay.”
7 | 18
18.
As expected, Myungsoo orders chocolate and doesn’t say anything else for the rest of the day. When they get back, the dorm is silent and no one mentions the hole in the door where Sunggyu’s doorknob used to be. It gets fixed while they’re performing on Inkigayo. One of the perks of being an idol is that eventually, everything reverts back to its original state.
7
19.
In all fairness, it’s not just Dongwoo. Woohyun’s at fault as well. Woohyun asks Sunggyu for advice by fighting with him, sharp words and disapproval manifesting in arguments that sometimes come to blows. Together the six of them have shaped Sunggyu into the leader they need, not the hyung they might want.
Dongwoo steps back and tries to rearrange his expectations. In the meantime, he watches Woohyun fight for Dongwoo’s place. But unlike Dongwoo, unlike those first innocent kisses underneath jungle-gym equipment with gravel digging into their knees, Woohyun starts with the game. He melds fan-service into reality, leaning into Sunggyu when Sesame Player’s production team leaves, brushing fingertips against Sunggyu’s wrist and neck.
“Get off of me, Woohyun,” Sunggyu says quietly. Everyone overhears; it’s a very small dorm, nothing is private. “It’s not real. The cameras are gone.”
8
20.
“That’s the difference.”
“I don’t understand.”
Myungsoo purses his lips and gazes steadily out of the window. “You do, though. You just don’t want to admit it.”
Dongwoo leans against the door and wonders if Myungsoo notices the hordes of fans queuing outside. If the half-smile is for them, for Woohyun, or for himself.
“Okay,” Woohyun says. “Okay.”
10
∞
a/n: thank you for this, reifica. for the suggestions and the edits and the constant amusement by my frustration over particular phrasing. you might hate love letters, but i really can't help myself. have a great weekend, and best of luck this week. i've got my fingers crossed.
furthermore, this story owes a significant debt to julio cortázar's "hopscotch." while his novel plays on a similar structure in a much more interesting way, i would be remiss not to mention his influence on my writing.
Rating: r
Word count: 1670 / 3340
Summary: There are always lines that need to be drawn.
revolutions (and their discontents)
Go, go, go, said the bird: human kind
Cannot bear very much reality.
Time past and time future
What might have been and what has been
Point to one end, which is always present.
t.s. eliot, "burnt norton"
∞
1.
Dongwoo never tells anyone, but he almost fails his initial audition with Woolim. They ask him to stay behind after all the other candidates have left, and CEO Lee Joong Yeop taps at his clipboard with the end of a ballpoint pen. Dongwoo tries to ignore his painful lack of rhythm.
“You’re good,” he says finally. It sounds more like a sigh than anything else, a tinge of regret, “you’re just not great.”
“I can do better,” Dongwoo finds himself saying, “I’ll get better. I can sing as well, I don’t just--”
This is where the narration splits. In reality, of course, he’d been told that he’d get one shot at this, that Lee Joong Yeop wanted to see some serious improvement in a month, that Dongwoo would be signed up for vocal lessons in the morning. Tablo had slapped him on the shoulder and Dongwoo had bowed and said his thanks, knees shaking, heart thudding, and escaped into the frosty air of evening. He’d stumbled into an alley and slid to the ground, pulled his legs flush against his chest, wrapped his hands under his thighs, cold seeping through the seat of his jeans, and victoriously shuddered out his tension.
But in his dreams, even years later, Lee Joong Yeop shakes his head and turns around and asks Dongwoo to leave and never come back in a voice that sounds oddly like Sunggyu’s.
“You will never be good enough,” Lee Joong Yeop always says.
Dongwoo believes it.
2 | 11
2.
They talk, sometimes. Sunggyu claims that Dongwoo needs to see a knee-therapist for an unresponsive recurring injury, and they camp out in a small family restaurant sipping Diet Cokes, hat brims pulled low over their faces more for the experience of hiding than out of actual necessity. No one knows who they are. Dongwoo isn’t convinced that’ll ever change, at this rate. It’s already been over a year.
Sunggyu blames it on Yeondo’s lack of cohesion, his carelessness, the practices he’s been skipping, his perpetual hoarseness. “He’s fucking up,” Sunggyu murmurs between admissions of discomfort and awkward shuffles. “This can’t last. We won’t make it like this.”
Dongwoo stays quiet. Sunggyu is full of relentless dissatisfaction with the present. But Dongwoo also remembers Sunggyu’s dreams of soft ballads and elaborate stages with Myungsoo on guitar, harmonizing with Kim Jongwan, and he’s pretty sure that’s not what their pop-rock dance team is going to be busy with. He wonders if Sunggyu will dislike the reality of debut just as much, if five years down the line they’ll be sitting there in scarves and face masks and equally as unhappy.
Sunggyu sometimes slides a foot against his sneaker, though and taps an even beat along his calf. Dongwoo’s worries melt away and he lets out a shuddering breath and stares out of the window, however far away it is, longing for the day when they’ll be too scared to be honest.
3 | 13
3.
Dongwoo’s not quite sure how it happens, but they start kissing after sharing chicken, squatting underneath shop awnings and park slides. “Come here,” Sunggyu says in a voice heavy with oil and grease, and Dongwoo does, curling his fingers in Sunggyu’s shirt, pressing back as hard as he gets. Sunggyu is intoxicating, dizzying, and Dongwoo thinks he’s grabbing into something that’s fading and pushes all the more relentlessly.
“Yeondo left last night. I’m going to be leader.”
Dongwoo’s not sure what that mean for them, him, or the group as a whole. He feels for Sunggyu’s chest and tries to remember the way Sunggyu reverberates when he’s hot and excited. He tries to remember everything about Sunggyu, the baby fat he’ll never have again, the new protrusions of his collarbones. This is time he can feel slipping away. “Okay.”
“I’m going to have to be strict.” A pause. “Stricter. No more sneaking out.”
Dongwoo laughs. That’s the least of their problems. He kisses Sunggyu and says as much and feels an arm behind his neck and it’s perfect for as long as Dongwoo pretends not to notice the metal bar digging into his shoulder or the reality of their surroundings and how cold seeps in through his boots and his socks and his heart.
4 | 14
4.
Sunggyu asks Dongwoo why he keeps a journal, why he has nightmares. Dongwoo can’t quite explain the art of compartmentalization to someone with so much inner strength. Sunggyu has to be enough not just for himself, not just for them, but for Infinite. He bites back a sigh and leans into a whisper and feels the touch of Sunggyu on his mouth, his eyelids. Sunggyu doesn’t ask why Dongwoo is crying. He doesn’t need to.
5 | 15
5.
The world shifts into winter, spring, summer. Sunggyu does, in fact, get stricter and sharper, but it all pays off one day with lights in their eyes while they remember to smile and track the camera around the periphery of the stage. It’s hard, and they are perfectly composed. Not a single crack. Lee Joong Yeop is impressed, Sunggyu says. He isn’t frowning. Dongwoo knows that means he’s just as proud.
They fuck two weeks after they debut, Sunggyu’s hands crawling helplessly up his shirt and not stopping, as they they typically did, at Dongwoo’s waistband. Dongwoo can’t do much else but moan and whine and scrabble at Sunggyu’s chest and shoulders and before he knows it, he’s naked, Sunggyu is naked, and everything is just a bit shatteringly difficult to contemplate.
“Condoms,” he gasps. It’s the one thing Dongwoo gets right. Sunggyu’s hands are warm, calloused, and it’s good, almost too good, everything about this is a helpless descent into anarchy. And Dongwoo doesn’t last, there’s no way he could, not with the unexpected onslaught of sheer physicality, but he still bends over afterwards, wincing at Sunggyu’s clumsiness, enjoying the eventual stretch and burn, toes curling in all of the right places, eyes fogging up, hands clenched in his bedsheets. Myungsoo is still in the studio. Sungjong is next door. The lights are low, but everyone probably knows.
That makes it better.
After Sunggyu comes and edges out, Dongwoo turns around to lean up and kiss the sweat off of Sunggyu’s forehead, his shoulders, the curve of his pectorals. When he gets to Sunggyu’s cheeks, he sees that Sunggyu’s eyes are unfocused and unclear. You’re not looking at me, Dongwoo thinks.
But. It’s fair. Dongwoo worships the expression of Sunggyu’s persistence. He’s encouraged it. He’s stayed behind after practice has ended, running hands over Sunggyu’s body in the studio, swallowing the thrust of desire and emphasizing Sunggyu’s lack of coordination and synchronization. He’d set down rules, priorities, and Sunggyu, for all his dictatorial decisions, respected that. Dongwoo wants them, not just the us.
Dongwoo’s half in love with Sunggyu, half in love with the fire underneath his skin. He doesn’t think it’s fair to lie, though, so he kisses Sunggyu with his eyes closed and says nothing at all.
6 | 16
6.
For his birthday, Dongwoo buys Sunggyu aftershave. It seems like nothing compared to the intensity of Sungyu’s weekly gifts, little plastic toys wrapped in tissue paper shoved into Dongwoo’s backpack, but when Dongwoo leans a bit too closely and smells it, him, on Sunggyu in public, he thinks it’s the most significant affirmation of ownership in the world, the best idea he’s ever had.
7 | 17
7.
“What do you want from me?”
Dongwoo knows he’s being irrational, that he can’t expect the ease of pre-debut and the highs of sexual experimentation to last forever. But. “I,” and Dongwoo can’t finish the sentence. He’s never been good with ephemeral things.
“I love you,” Sunggyu says. It sounds like hollow disappointment. How did we get here, how do we go back? “I just. Tell me what I should do.”
Dongwoo draws away and into himself and smiles and says it’s fine, it’s all really fine without saying much of anything at all.
8 | 19
8.
Sunggyu tries. He leaves toys in Dongwoo’s bag, little plastic eggs with curled notes and apologies. Dongwoo leaves his bag at home and leans into Sunggyu on camera, touches him more, smiles brightly. It’s a balance: the fans can’t know, but Dongwoo can’t stay away. It’s exactly what he always wanted.
The audience is a dark, tumultuous sea of half-hearted approval. It roars and tips direction at the slightest apparent rift in interband cohesion. Fans are afraid of getting hurt, Hoya said once. So they jump ship.
The irony doesn’t escape Dongwoo. “Fuck,” he thinks, and then kisses Sunggyu onstage during their encore performance of the last leg of their Seoul tour.
9
9.
His popularity ratchets up; Dongwoo’s praised for his showmanship, his good nature, his kindness. Woolim craftily manufactures a scandal between him and Kara’s Nicole to comfort fans that he’s normal and heterosexual. He sleeps with Sunggyu that night, tearing buttons off his designer shirt, sucking deep marks into his chest.
“You’re such a fake,” Sunggyu says, but it’s with a laugh and a groan and Dongwoo flicks his tongue around Sunggyu’s nipples. “Why would you--”
Dongwoo can’t separate performance from reality. The room feels darker. “I don’t know,” he gasps. “I want everything to last.” To be documented, to be verified.
Sunggyu moans and someone bangs on the door and Dongwoo thinks this is the sharpest compromise he can make. “Sing for me,” he says, frantically unbuckling Sunggyu’s jeans. “Your solo song.”
He does. It’s their own private concert, and Dongwoo feels the approval swirl even more tightly around his limbs. They are not alone, they never really have been, but somehow that makes it better, that makes it tenable, that introduces the future Dongwoo never could have otherwise imagined.
There’s applause. Sunggyu comes in his mouth. Dongwoo comes into Sunggyu’s hand and the world flickers.
10 | 20
10.
It’s easy, it’s too easy to live between poles, to mediate illusion with the honest sweat of time. Dongwoo does not bother with words, and Sunggyu does not lie: not to the camera, not to himself. They kiss each other onstage and in bed and when Sunggyu throws an arm around Sungjong and nuzzles Myungsoo’s ear, it’s to mediate, to carefully line the arena of pretense with excuses.
“I love you,” Sunggyu says quietly and loudly. And Dongwoo learns to believe both.
∞
11.
Woohyun quickly becomes everyone’s favorite; he flirts effortlessly with the stylists and trainers, fluttering his eyelashes helplessly at their vocal instructor, asking for different songs, for better songs, for new material to perfect.
“He’s really good,” Dongwoo hears Hoya say to Sunggyu one afternoon, towelling off soap in their tiny, grotty bathroom. “His dancing is just technically--”
“Don’t care,” Sunggyu says tonelessly.
“He’ll probably be picked for the final line-up.”
“Just our luck.”
The buzzer rings in the hall. Their three minutes are up. Thirteen boys sharing one sink necessitates a sort of compromise.
Dongwoo slumps against the door, hair sticking into his eyes, sweat plastering his shirt to his body. Listening to Sunggyu’s frank analysis is always exhausting, but when he turns around and sees Woohyun take a step back, eyes wide and helpless and completely honest, Dongwoo thinks he’s more tired that ever before, balancing regret with the sinking realization that his is not the only world revolving around Sunggyu’s approval.
When Sunggyu ambles out, washed and smelling clean and raw, Dongwoo leans a bit too close and whispers absolutely nothing into Sunggyu’s ear just to watch Woohyun withdraw into anomie.
2 | 12
12.
“You’ll regret it.”
Dongwoo picks at his teeth. Meat might be a treat, but it’s heavy in his mouth. “What do you mean?”
Myungsoo shrugs. “You just get one chance to decide who you’ll be. We all get one chance. Are you sure that this is who you want to be? You think you can keep it up?”
“Better to be giving,” he says, only meaning half of it. Myungsoo’s eyes are sharp and his mouth opens and Dongwoo thinks Myungsoo is about to call him out on one of the biggest and worst decisions of Dongwoo’s life; Myungsoo’s already made his, after all. He would know.
But Myungsoo smiles after a second and turns away and Dongwoo’s not sure if he’s infinitely relieved or not. “You deserve each other.”
2
13.
Dongwoo is there when Sunggyu’s voice is hoarse and he can’t sing anymore and is otherwise out of language. Woohyun pushes Sunggyu harder. And they fight, it comes down to blows, to icy shoulders and frozen faces. It’s past midnight and they’re running through Tablo’s choreography for the eighteenth time. Sunggyu still can’t manage to pull the steps together. Woohyun still can’t manage the art of being alone with other people.
Sunggyu brushes at Dongwoo’s arm. “Let’s get out of here. That asshole can practice on his own.”
“Look. It’s not hard. I can show you--”
Woohyun never turns off. His sweetness is a sickly, pervasive thing. Dongwoo slams the door behind him half for good measure, half because Sunggyu expects him to, and Sunggyu gives him a laugh and a helpless, honest sort of smile in return. It’s well deserved.
They walk home. Woohyun ambles into the dorm in the morning, bags under his eyes deep, smile permanently affixed to his face.
3
14.
Sunggyu opens his mouth a bit too widely when he sings. It’s unfairly sexual. Dongwoo’s not sure if he notices because of all of the mirrors, or if it’s because it’s obvious, if everyone notices, if everyone is always watching their leader for those kinds of intimate cues. Woohyun, at least, seems to.
But Dongwoo is vindicated by Woohyun’s inability to reframe his conception of reality. Because even if Woohyun stays behind to practice, staring at the rings of sweat lining Sunggyu’s shirt, he can never manage to say anything other than no or you’re doing it wrong, can I show you-- or will you help me arrange this song?
Dongwoo, on the other hand, knows how to distinguish work with the dream and with desire. He confesses to Sunggyu right outside of the dance studio in winter, snow and cold staining their hands red. Admissions and confusion bubble inside his chest: half for Sunggyu, half for the shadow Dongwoo sees and knows is Woohyun waiting and watching in the awning beneath the stairs ten feet away,
“Yes,” Sunggyu says, stepping forward, stepping in. “Yes.”
4
15.
Eventually, Woohyun dispenses with all pleasantries. It was really only a matter of time; Dongwoo’s just surprised that the act lasted as long as it did. He flips on for the camera and off for the rest of them and no one is really sure which is the real Nam Woohyun. Dongwoo thinks the importance of that division is severely overrated.
When the final two members to be added to their line-up amble naively into the studio one day, Hoya curses, Sunggyu points them in Woohyun’s direction, and Woohyun just sneers. It’s a bit late for honesty, though, and so even that doesn’t win Woohyun any favors.
“You know the routine. You can teach them.” It’s a throwback to Woohyun’s initial attempts at solidarity. If Dongwoo cared, even he’d think that the slur was a bit much, almost overly rude.
To compensate, Dongwoo kisses Sunggyu in the bathroom after practice. They have more time, now that they’ve been whittled down to seven. Sunggyu clings to Dongwoo’s hair and leaves bruises down his neck and everyone pretends uncomfortably that Dongwoo is a colossal klutz. When they’re done and back on even footing, Dongwoo presses warmth into Sunggyu’s mouth and buys a handful of scarves online.
5
16.
When they’ve cleaned up, Dongwoo pads out of the room to the kitchen for a bottle of water. Sungjong’s door is shut tightly, but, as expected, Woohyun is sitting in the living room, toying with his phone.
The flash is still on. Woohyun was probably taking pictures. “I was calling my dad,” he says, after a pause. Dongwoo finds that he’s slightly irritated by the obvious lie; Woohyun might be Infinite’s lead singer, but Dongwoo is still his hyung.
“Ah,” Dongwoo says. He tastes the syllable. “Do you want something to drink as well?”
“I’ll be okay. Wouldn’t want to look bloated in the morning.”
“You’ll be fine.” Another practiced line. “We’re done. Go sleep.”
“You too.”
Dongwoo turns away. For a second, he thinks that he and Woohyun aren’t terribly different, that Woohyun is also desperately insecure, dreaming of rejection, clinging to the fantasy of acceptance. That Woohyun still doesn’t know what he’s been doing wrong.
“You’re a great singer,” Dongwoo says finally, looking down at Woohyun and past everything he dislikes into everything he admires, everything that’s so similar to Sunggyu.
But whereas Sunggyu would have smiled weakly and motioned for Dongwoo to join him on the floor, exuding confidence and desire and a lazy sort of companionship, Woohyun brushes off Dongwoo’s attempts at reconnection with a useless flip of his hair and a distinct lack of empathy. “Thanks,” he replies remotely, getting to his feet. “See you in the morning.”
Dongwoo thinks that next time, he’ll advise against Sunggyu’s choking back sound when he comes.
6
17.
It’s evening, and Myungsoo decides to break out a pack of cards and play. “It’s been a while since we’ve done something as a team,” he says, and he’s right, so they fold cushions on the floor and lean forward and suddenly Woohyun jerks away.
They all stare. "Ah,” he says. “I just need a moment with Sunggyu. We’ll be back in a second.”
Sungyeol rolls his eyes. “Whatever. We’re starting without you.”
Sunggyu slowly gets to his feet and Dongwoo quells the urge to help. He looks exhausted--they all do--but Dongwoo watches the shutters of authority close over his face and thinks that he can’t even begin to imagine that inner strength it takes Sunggyu to keep it together.
Woohyun and Sunggyu retreat to their room, close the door, and Myungsoo deals a hand. And then stops.
“It stinks. I can smell it on you from across the room. Throw it away.” Woohyun’s voice is shrill. There’s no point in pretending that they can’t hear.
There’s a thud. Dongwoo winces and hopes that Sunggyu has enough presence of mind not to further agitate any of Woohyun’s injuries. Hoya coughs. “Should we do something about...?”
“They’ll figure it out,” and Myungsoo stares relentlessly at Dongwoo. “They’re friends.”
“Get the fuck over yourself, Woohyun. It was a present.”
“You’re ridiculous, you’re fucking ridiculous if you think you can keep something like that up without anyone--”
“Stop it.”
“He’s jealous,” Myungsoo says softly, eyes still trained on Dongwoo’s profile. “He’s always been jealous.”
Dongwoo knows that he could open the door and explain everything away and draw ever more lines and lies into their narrative. Sunggyu might even be okay with that. The other five might welcome it.
Instead, he gets to his feet. “Let’s get ice-cream,” he says as lightly as he can. “I’ll pay.”
7 | 18
18.
As expected, Myungsoo orders chocolate and doesn’t say anything else for the rest of the day. When they get back, the dorm is silent and no one mentions the hole in the door where Sunggyu’s doorknob used to be. It gets fixed while they’re performing on Inkigayo. One of the perks of being an idol is that eventually, everything reverts back to its original state.
7
19.
In all fairness, it’s not just Dongwoo. Woohyun’s at fault as well. Woohyun asks Sunggyu for advice by fighting with him, sharp words and disapproval manifesting in arguments that sometimes come to blows. Together the six of them have shaped Sunggyu into the leader they need, not the hyung they might want.
Dongwoo steps back and tries to rearrange his expectations. In the meantime, he watches Woohyun fight for Dongwoo’s place. But unlike Dongwoo, unlike those first innocent kisses underneath jungle-gym equipment with gravel digging into their knees, Woohyun starts with the game. He melds fan-service into reality, leaning into Sunggyu when Sesame Player’s production team leaves, brushing fingertips against Sunggyu’s wrist and neck.
“Get off of me, Woohyun,” Sunggyu says quietly. Everyone overhears; it’s a very small dorm, nothing is private. “It’s not real. The cameras are gone.”
8
20.
“That’s the difference.”
“I don’t understand.”
Myungsoo purses his lips and gazes steadily out of the window. “You do, though. You just don’t want to admit it.”
Dongwoo leans against the door and wonders if Myungsoo notices the hordes of fans queuing outside. If the half-smile is for them, for Woohyun, or for himself.
“Okay,” Woohyun says. “Okay.”
10
∞
a/n: thank you for this, reifica. for the suggestions and the edits and the constant amusement by my frustration over particular phrasing. you might hate love letters, but i really can't help myself. have a great weekend, and best of luck this week. i've got my fingers crossed.
furthermore, this story owes a significant debt to julio cortázar's "hopscotch." while his novel plays on a similar structure in a much more interesting way, i would be remiss not to mention his influence on my writing.