Ship/Member: SCoups/Jeonghan Major Tags: N/A Additional Tags: idolverse, complicated relationships, unrequited-ish love Permission to remix: Yes
*** Jeonghan’s midway through a long-winded story that Seungcheol hasn’t actually been paying close attention to when Jeonghan pauses, tilts his beer toward Mingyu and Minghao, and says, “Sometimes I wonder if they can tell when it’s fake.”
Seungcheol isn’t drunk but he doesn’t know what Jeonghan is talking about, so he stares at the shape of Jeonghan’s hand clenched around the bottle, bony and pale. The ring on his pinky clanks against the glass in a nervous rhythm. Seungcheol can almost feel nervous energy radiating off of Jeonghan, even with Seokmin sitting between them. He imagines his palm pressed against Jeonghan’s chest, cupping the staccato flight of his heart.
“When what is?” asks Chan, leaning into Seungcheol’s space as he reaches for more food.
“Everything,” Jeonghan says, with a razor-sharp laugh. “All the bullshit we say on stage.”
Seungcheol speaks without thinking. “I never lie on stage.”
He watches Jeonghan’s face come into view as he leans around Seokmin. His eyes, dark and unreadable, meet Seungcheol’s. “Don’t you?” he asks.
Seungcheol opens his mouth to protest—just because Jeonghan lies with every breath doesn’t mean the rest of them do, doesn’t mean Seungcheol does—but Minghao speaks before he gets the chance to argue his point.
“I think it’s a matter of perspective,” Minghao says. “It’s not so much about whether or not it’s true but whether or not you believe it.”
Jeonghan holds Seungcheol’s gaze for a moment longer and then his eyes flicker towards Minghao, plunging Seungcheol into cold water. The lamp over their table refracts into a pattern of light and shadows. Seungcheol’s mind numbs, as though he isn’t really here.
“It’s not,” Jeonghan argues. “You’d have to be delusional to really believe everything you say on stage—I mean really believe it.”
“Maybe I do,” Seungcheol interjects, if only to drag Jeonghan’s gaze back to him.
A pause. Jeonghan looks at him, assessing. Seungcheol’s mouth flattens into a hard line.
“You care about the fans,” Seungcheol protests, the edges of his words curling in the heat of his anger. What he’s angry about, he isn’t even quite sure. “They’re real. They spend their time and money on us. They love us. And you’re going to sit here and tell me everything you say to them is bullshit?”
Jeonghan smiles, barely. “Ah, Seungcheol,” he says in a drawl that always precedes his sharpest words. “We’re not really gods.”
--
But regardless of what Jeonghan thinks: Seungcheol is always truthful on stage.
“I love you,” he says into his microphone. His words reverberate through the stadium and his eyes slide over to Jeonghan.
Jeonghan looks back at him, aglow in stage lights. To Seungcheol he seems like a star fallen to earth—radiant, celestial, ephemeral. The crowd roars with devotion, every scream a sacrifice at the altar of the stage. Seungcheol, watching Jeonghan, feels the same roar rip through his chest.
Carried on a wave of adoration, he wanders the stage and spots a fan holding a sign in the crowd. Jeongcheol forever, it reads, alongside a picture of them when they were younger, less aware, more desperate to be loved. He turns and catches Jeonghan’s eye just after he spots it.
He tilts a smile in Seungcheol’s direction and then fades away, too distant and cold to touch. For once, Seungcheol does not try to reach out a hand to catch him before he disappears into the night.
--
How can it be a lie, just because it happens on stage, if everyone watching believes it to be true?
--
“So you just think of it as lying,” Seungcheol says, later, only the green glow of the alarm clock on his nightstand piercing through the dark. “Everything you say in front of a camera?”
Jeonghan groans and shifts away from Seungcheol, a gap of cold air rushing into the space he left. “Are you really still thinking about that?”
He is thinking about how Jeonghan’s mouth, velvet and warm when they kiss, must be the truth. It can’t really matter what words he says as long as the physical weight of the truth shoves its way into the foreground, undeniable.
“I mean it,” Seungcheol says. “I mean all of it.”
Jeonghan remains quiet. Seungcheol listens to the sound of his breathing and shifts toward him, but stops himself from chasing after the thin warmth he’d left.
“Then I mean it too,” Jeonghan says, his words a mirage of comfort. “Go to sleep.”
--
It didn’t start like this. At the beginning it was blurry but absolute, and Seungcheol plunged headfirst. Only later did he realize his lungs had filled with water.
But at first—stage blended into home, on camera meant as much as off, and they were tired and desperate and—
I need you, is what he’d said, his voice small but clear.
At least back then, they were the same.
--
The orange glow of the setting sun casts warm stripes across the cavity of the plane. Jeonghan, looking out the window, burns bright.
“It’s not the same for me as it is for you,” he says so quietly Seungcheol almost misses it. His head swivels back around, and now he is outlined in a halo of dying sunlight. “I didn’t know what I was getting into.”
Seungcheol’s stomach swoops like they’re experiencing turbulence, but the plane remains steady, filled with an endless whir of noise as they speed across the sky.
“What do you mean?” he asks carefully.
“You can mean what you say,” Jeonghan answers. “But I just have to get by.”
There’s something hidden underneath his words, endless double meanings Seungcheol doesn’t really want to dig up. He reaches for Jeonghan’s hand instead.
It shouldn’t mean something when Jeonghan doesn’t pull away.
--
“You should date,” Jeonghan says when they’re back in Seoul, milling around during a lull on set. Seungcheol searches his face for a hint of sarcasm or cruelty, but finds only sincerity where he expects poison.
“There’s no time,” Seungcheol mumbles. He can’t hold Jeonghan’s gaze and his eyes drop to his shoes, an embarrassing sign of defeat.
“You’re in the prime of life, hot, rich, and famous,” Jeonghan continues. He stuffs his hands into the pockets of his linen pants, selected for him by a team who all cooed over how good they looked as soon as he stepped out of the dressing room. “It’s a shame not to use all of that.”
Seungcheol looks up at him again. Jeonghan meets him with the same cool, impenetrable stare as before.
“What about you?” Seungcheol says lightly—teasing, maybe. Trying.
Jeonghan, for once, is the first to look away. “Who said I wasn’t?” he retorts airily. “This is about you.”
He hesitates for a split second too long before he walks away. In that split second the knife twists deeper into Seungcheol’s gut, blunt and predictable but excruciating all the same.
--
Another country, another hotel. Seungcheol goes to the swimming pool at dusk, distantly worried about someone photographing him but not enough to stay entombed in his room. He slides into the water, sinking down until he hits the concrete bottom. The quiet thrums in his ears. He wants to let go, leave his feelings floating in this pool like debris.
When he reemerges, the sun has slipped beneath the horizon, leaving Seungcheol in the afterlight of its death. Until the next day, when it will rise again, and again, and again.
--
The yellow haze of a sky before a thunderstorm draws Seungcheol to the window of his hotel room. He looks out at an indiscernible mass of concrete, his reflection a faint shadow within the glass. Carats, be safe coming to the concert! He composes in his head. It smells like it’s going to storm.
A beep signals him to turn around before the door to his room opens and Jeonghan appears in its gap, slight as a shadow. His eyes are as dark and heavy as a rain cloud, falling on Seungcheol with the intent of thunder. An ache pools low in Seungcheol’s stomach, familiar and unwanted.
“What are you doing here?” he asks.
If Jeonghan is surprised, he doesn’t show it, crossing the distance between them but stopping just short of an arm’s length away.
“I got lonely,” he says, joking, but Seungcheol hears the honesty laced through his words.
A clap of thunder startles them both. Seungcheol turns back toward the window, searching the sky for rain. There is no sign of the incoming storm.
“I thought you were seeing someone,” Seungcheol says.
He looks at Jeonghan. Neither of them moves.
“I never said that,” Jeonghan answers. “You inferred.”
“Okay,” Seungcheol agrees. He hesitates, fighting against the way the room shifts and tilts towards Jeonghan. Gravitational pull. He’s always losing his footing. “I think you should go, anyway.”
The slightest flash of anger crosses Jeonghan’s face, but then it’s gone, smoothed out and undetectable.
“If you really loved me like you say you do, you wouldn’t do this,” Jeonghan spits out.
It’s such an obvious manipulation that even Seungcheol can see it. He wants to argue, but he can’t seem to think of anything to say.
A few raindrops splatter against the window. Jeonghan takes a step closer.
“Do you love me?” Seungcheol asks, voice hollow with fear.
Jeonghan’s steps falter. “Of course,” he says, cool as water. Seungcheol slips beneath the surface, his want rendering him immobile, likely to drown.
Jeonghan reaches for him with cold hands and cups his cheeks. “I need you,” he says softly.
Seungcheol takes a deep breath and lets the water flood his lungs.
[FILL] the two of us are just young gods
Major Tags: N/A
Additional Tags: idolverse, complicated relationships, unrequited-ish love
Permission to remix: Yes
***
Jeonghan’s midway through a long-winded story that Seungcheol hasn’t actually been paying close attention to when Jeonghan pauses, tilts his beer toward Mingyu and Minghao, and says, “Sometimes I wonder if they can tell when it’s fake.”
Seungcheol isn’t drunk but he doesn’t know what Jeonghan is talking about, so he stares at the shape of Jeonghan’s hand clenched around the bottle, bony and pale. The ring on his pinky clanks against the glass in a nervous rhythm. Seungcheol can almost feel nervous energy radiating off of Jeonghan, even with Seokmin sitting between them. He imagines his palm pressed against Jeonghan’s chest, cupping the staccato flight of his heart.
“When what is?” asks Chan, leaning into Seungcheol’s space as he reaches for more food.
“Everything,” Jeonghan says, with a razor-sharp laugh. “All the bullshit we say on stage.”
Seungcheol speaks without thinking. “I never lie on stage.”
He watches Jeonghan’s face come into view as he leans around Seokmin. His eyes, dark and unreadable, meet Seungcheol’s. “Don’t you?” he asks.
Seungcheol opens his mouth to protest—just because Jeonghan lies with every breath doesn’t mean the rest of them do, doesn’t mean Seungcheol does—but Minghao speaks before he gets the chance to argue his point.
“I think it’s a matter of perspective,” Minghao says. “It’s not so much about whether or not it’s true but whether or not you believe it.”
Jeonghan holds Seungcheol’s gaze for a moment longer and then his eyes flicker towards Minghao, plunging Seungcheol into cold water. The lamp over their table refracts into a pattern of light and shadows. Seungcheol’s mind numbs, as though he isn’t really here.
“It’s not,” Jeonghan argues. “You’d have to be delusional to really believe everything you say on stage—I mean really believe it.”
“Maybe I do,” Seungcheol interjects, if only to drag Jeonghan’s gaze back to him.
A pause. Jeonghan looks at him, assessing. Seungcheol’s mouth flattens into a hard line.
“You care about the fans,” Seungcheol protests, the edges of his words curling in the heat of his anger. What he’s angry about, he isn’t even quite sure. “They’re real. They spend their time and money on us. They love us. And you’re going to sit here and tell me everything you say to them is bullshit?”
Jeonghan smiles, barely. “Ah, Seungcheol,” he says in a drawl that always precedes his sharpest words. “We’re not really gods.”
--
But regardless of what Jeonghan thinks: Seungcheol is always truthful on stage.
“I love you,” he says into his microphone. His words reverberate through the stadium and his eyes slide over to Jeonghan.
Jeonghan looks back at him, aglow in stage lights. To Seungcheol he seems like a star fallen to earth—radiant, celestial, ephemeral. The crowd roars with devotion, every scream a sacrifice at the altar of the stage. Seungcheol, watching Jeonghan, feels the same roar rip through his chest.
Carried on a wave of adoration, he wanders the stage and spots a fan holding a sign in the crowd. Jeongcheol forever, it reads, alongside a picture of them when they were younger, less aware, more desperate to be loved. He turns and catches Jeonghan’s eye just after he spots it.
He tilts a smile in Seungcheol’s direction and then fades away, too distant and cold to touch. For once, Seungcheol does not try to reach out a hand to catch him before he disappears into the night.
--
How can it be a lie, just because it happens on stage, if everyone watching believes it to be true?
--
“So you just think of it as lying,” Seungcheol says, later, only the green glow of the alarm clock on his nightstand piercing through the dark. “Everything you say in front of a camera?”
Jeonghan groans and shifts away from Seungcheol, a gap of cold air rushing into the space he left. “Are you really still thinking about that?”
He is thinking about how Jeonghan’s mouth, velvet and warm when they kiss, must be the truth. It can’t really matter what words he says as long as the physical weight of the truth shoves its way into the foreground, undeniable.
“I mean it,” Seungcheol says. “I mean all of it.”
Jeonghan remains quiet. Seungcheol listens to the sound of his breathing and shifts toward him, but stops himself from chasing after the thin warmth he’d left.
“Then I mean it too,” Jeonghan says, his words a mirage of comfort. “Go to sleep.”
--
It didn’t start like this. At the beginning it was blurry but absolute, and Seungcheol plunged headfirst. Only later did he realize his lungs had filled with water.
But at first—stage blended into home, on camera meant as much as off, and they were tired and desperate and—
I need you, is what he’d said, his voice small but clear.
At least back then, they were the same.
--
The orange glow of the setting sun casts warm stripes across the cavity of the plane. Jeonghan, looking out the window, burns bright.
“It’s not the same for me as it is for you,” he says so quietly Seungcheol almost misses it. His head swivels back around, and now he is outlined in a halo of dying sunlight. “I didn’t know what I was getting into.”
Seungcheol’s stomach swoops like they’re experiencing turbulence, but the plane remains steady, filled with an endless whir of noise as they speed across the sky.
“What do you mean?” he asks carefully.
“You can mean what you say,” Jeonghan answers. “But I just have to get by.”
There’s something hidden underneath his words, endless double meanings Seungcheol doesn’t really want to dig up. He reaches for Jeonghan’s hand instead.
It shouldn’t mean something when Jeonghan doesn’t pull away.
--
“You should date,” Jeonghan says when they’re back in Seoul, milling around during a lull on set. Seungcheol searches his face for a hint of sarcasm or cruelty, but finds only sincerity where he expects poison.
“There’s no time,” Seungcheol mumbles. He can’t hold Jeonghan’s gaze and his eyes drop to his shoes, an embarrassing sign of defeat.
“You’re in the prime of life, hot, rich, and famous,” Jeonghan continues. He stuffs his hands into the pockets of his linen pants, selected for him by a team who all cooed over how good they looked as soon as he stepped out of the dressing room. “It’s a shame not to use all of that.”
Seungcheol looks up at him again. Jeonghan meets him with the same cool, impenetrable stare as before.
“What about you?” Seungcheol says lightly—teasing, maybe. Trying.
Jeonghan, for once, is the first to look away. “Who said I wasn’t?” he retorts airily. “This is about you.”
He hesitates for a split second too long before he walks away. In that split second the knife twists deeper into Seungcheol’s gut, blunt and predictable but excruciating all the same.
--
Another country, another hotel. Seungcheol goes to the swimming pool at dusk, distantly worried about someone photographing him but not enough to stay entombed in his room. He slides into the water, sinking down until he hits the concrete bottom. The quiet thrums in his ears. He wants to let go, leave his feelings floating in this pool like debris.
When he reemerges, the sun has slipped beneath the horizon, leaving Seungcheol in the afterlight of its death. Until the next day, when it will rise again, and again, and again.
--
The yellow haze of a sky before a thunderstorm draws Seungcheol to the window of his hotel room. He looks out at an indiscernible mass of concrete, his reflection a faint shadow within the glass. Carats, be safe coming to the concert! He composes in his head. It smells like it’s going to storm.
A beep signals him to turn around before the door to his room opens and Jeonghan appears in its gap, slight as a shadow. His eyes are as dark and heavy as a rain cloud, falling on Seungcheol with the intent of thunder. An ache pools low in Seungcheol’s stomach, familiar and unwanted.
“What are you doing here?” he asks.
If Jeonghan is surprised, he doesn’t show it, crossing the distance between them but stopping just short of an arm’s length away.
“I got lonely,” he says, joking, but Seungcheol hears the honesty laced through his words.
A clap of thunder startles them both. Seungcheol turns back toward the window, searching the sky for rain. There is no sign of the incoming storm.
“I thought you were seeing someone,” Seungcheol says.
He looks at Jeonghan. Neither of them moves.
“I never said that,” Jeonghan answers. “You inferred.”
“Okay,” Seungcheol agrees. He hesitates, fighting against the way the room shifts and tilts towards Jeonghan. Gravitational pull. He’s always losing his footing. “I think you should go, anyway.”
The slightest flash of anger crosses Jeonghan’s face, but then it’s gone, smoothed out and undetectable.
“If you really loved me like you say you do, you wouldn’t do this,” Jeonghan spits out.
It’s such an obvious manipulation that even Seungcheol can see it. He wants to argue, but he can’t seem to think of anything to say.
A few raindrops splatter against the window. Jeonghan takes a step closer.
“Do you love me?” Seungcheol asks, voice hollow with fear.
Jeonghan’s steps falter. “Of course,” he says, cool as water. Seungcheol slips beneath the surface, his want rendering him immobile, likely to drown.
Jeonghan reaches for him with cold hands and cups his cheeks. “I need you,” he says softly.
Seungcheol takes a deep breath and lets the water flood his lungs.