Ship/Member: Soonyoung/Jihoon Major Tags: N/A Additional Tags: sentinel/guide au (w some liberties), idolverse Permission to remix: Yes
***
It's lucky that Jihoon is in the studio tonight.
can i come to u was all Soonyoung had sent, no punctuation like a heathen, and Jihoon replies with a thumbs up. There used to be protocols to observe, calls and responses in code and communications through a group chat with no fewer than three staff members, but it's been long enough since the chaos that was debuting a group with a sentinel in it that they've long since figured out their own more casual systems.
It's only about five minutes before Soonyoung knocks and lets himself in, so he must have already been at the company practicing.
Soonyoung confirms Jihoon's suspicions: "I was just downstairs. Sorry. It's loud tonight."
It's loud every night. Soonyoung doesn't handle the fluorescents well, but still for some reason practices alone in rooms with all the lights on, music pounding, sweat dripping into his eyes. Like all the pamphlets he'd been given about managing sensory input served him better as napkins than as practical guides.
Why would I need guidance, Soonyoung likes to say, wrapping a genial arm around Jihoon's shoulders, when I have this guy?
Jihoon grunts at him and puts his headphones back on. He's got another hour in him. Maybe two. The song needs four or five before he can reasonably call it finished, but it isn't due until the end of the week. Which is a good thing, because he's not going to be getting much more done tonight.
Soonyoung sighs and collapses dramatically into a seated heap at Jihoon's feet. He nudges closer, closer still, looking up every now and again like he's pushing his luck. His hair is white blonde and spiky. The stylists keep putting him in colored contacts, ice blue, which Soonyoung detests because he can feel them against his corneas and the distraction means that for every moment they're not performing he needs Jihoon's hand in his just to stop from floating away into an overload. And for a guy who loves to loudly proclaim his devotion to Jihoon and desire for more skinship and literally has a registered disability for which Jihoon himself has been assigned as an accommodation, Soonyoung hates being seen needing help.
He's still inching closer like he's afraid Jihoon is going to snap. His eyes are pinched the way they get when a migraine looms.
"It's fine," Jihoon mutters, to put the both of them out of their misery.
Soonyoung's hand wraps around Jihoon's bare ankle, and the room kaleidoscopes into a sensory fractal.
Jihoon has never gotten used to this part; he doesn't know how any person reasonably could. Soonyoung's consciousness sprawls, predatory and unrelenting like invasive flora in an otherwise undisturbed forest. Where Jihoon had before been focused on clicking around his editing software, he's now thrust into a view wherein each wavelength of light emanating from his screen is distinct from the others. He hears the buzzing of the computer, the lights, the gears in his watch. He feels the press of the air conditioner against every facet of his body.
"Intense," he remarks.
"Told you it was loud."
"Gonna calm down?"
Soonyoung grumbles. "Why are you always so harsh?"
"Take it or leave it." Jihoon chews a little on the inside of his cheek and tastes that afternoon's lunch. "Seriously, relax."
Soonyoung grimaces again, bleached hair prickling Jihoon's knee just below the line of his shorts, and that stubborn sensitive sentinel part of him loosens its grip, fractionally, on their combined senses. Soonyoung describes these moments, once they've passed, with a kind of religious fervor. Soonyoung who despite his pride willingly sinks to his knees in front of Jihoon like it costs him nothing. Soonyoung who is well-practiced in the art of worship to the point of obsession, between his thirsts for artistry and fame and pressing at the limits of what his body is capable of, this body that has already broken barriers, done and seen and weathered more than most, this body that has become, hilariously, absurdly, Jihoon's responsibility somewhere along the way. Soonyoung who, with no traces of irony in his voice, calls what Jihoon can do a miracle.
Soonyoung whose first question upon meeting the boy who would become his guide was: "But can you dance?"
Jihoon could and can. Amidst a sea of rumors to the contrary, Jihoon wanted this as badly as any of them from the very start.
"Better?" he asks after a long moment.
Soonyoung smiles up at him dopily. "You're magic."
"I need to keep working," he says instead of responding in kind. "That fine?"
"Do your thing. I'll just be down here."
This, Jihoon will never admit, is the part he himself would liken to prayer. Soonyoung fills his awareness with thorns and Jihoon, methodical and tactless, pares them back, one after another until the room shimmers in soft afterglow.
Soonyoung's temple grateful against Jihoon's knee, and Jihoon pressing back.
[FILL] degrees of noise
Major Tags: N/A
Additional Tags: sentinel/guide au (w some liberties), idolverse
Permission to remix: Yes
***
It's lucky that Jihoon is in the studio tonight.
can i come to u was all Soonyoung had sent, no punctuation like a heathen, and Jihoon replies with a thumbs up. There used to be protocols to observe, calls and responses in code and communications through a group chat with no fewer than three staff members, but it's been long enough since the chaos that was debuting a group with a sentinel in it that they've long since figured out their own more casual systems.
It's only about five minutes before Soonyoung knocks and lets himself in, so he must have already been at the company practicing.
Soonyoung confirms Jihoon's suspicions: "I was just downstairs. Sorry. It's loud tonight."
It's loud every night. Soonyoung doesn't handle the fluorescents well, but still for some reason practices alone in rooms with all the lights on, music pounding, sweat dripping into his eyes. Like all the pamphlets he'd been given about managing sensory input served him better as napkins than as practical guides.
Why would I need guidance, Soonyoung likes to say, wrapping a genial arm around Jihoon's shoulders, when I have this guy?
Jihoon grunts at him and puts his headphones back on. He's got another hour in him. Maybe two. The song needs four or five before he can reasonably call it finished, but it isn't due until the end of the week. Which is a good thing, because he's not going to be getting much more done tonight.
Soonyoung sighs and collapses dramatically into a seated heap at Jihoon's feet. He nudges closer, closer still, looking up every now and again like he's pushing his luck. His hair is white blonde and spiky. The stylists keep putting him in colored contacts, ice blue, which Soonyoung detests because he can feel them against his corneas and the distraction means that for every moment they're not performing he needs Jihoon's hand in his just to stop from floating away into an overload. And for a guy who loves to loudly proclaim his devotion to Jihoon and desire for more skinship and literally has a registered disability for which Jihoon himself has been assigned as an accommodation, Soonyoung hates being seen needing help.
He's still inching closer like he's afraid Jihoon is going to snap. His eyes are pinched the way they get when a migraine looms.
"It's fine," Jihoon mutters, to put the both of them out of their misery.
Soonyoung's hand wraps around Jihoon's bare ankle, and the room kaleidoscopes into a sensory fractal.
Jihoon has never gotten used to this part; he doesn't know how any person reasonably could. Soonyoung's consciousness sprawls, predatory and unrelenting like invasive flora in an otherwise undisturbed forest. Where Jihoon had before been focused on clicking around his editing software, he's now thrust into a view wherein each wavelength of light emanating from his screen is distinct from the others. He hears the buzzing of the computer, the lights, the gears in his watch. He feels the press of the air conditioner against every facet of his body.
"Intense," he remarks.
"Told you it was loud."
"Gonna calm down?"
Soonyoung grumbles. "Why are you always so harsh?"
"Take it or leave it." Jihoon chews a little on the inside of his cheek and tastes that afternoon's lunch. "Seriously, relax."
Soonyoung grimaces again, bleached hair prickling Jihoon's knee just below the line of his shorts, and that stubborn sensitive sentinel part of him loosens its grip, fractionally, on their combined senses. Soonyoung describes these moments, once they've passed, with a kind of religious fervor. Soonyoung who despite his pride willingly sinks to his knees in front of Jihoon like it costs him nothing. Soonyoung who is well-practiced in the art of worship to the point of obsession, between his thirsts for artistry and fame and pressing at the limits of what his body is capable of, this body that has already broken barriers, done and seen and weathered more than most, this body that has become, hilariously, absurdly, Jihoon's responsibility somewhere along the way. Soonyoung who, with no traces of irony in his voice, calls what Jihoon can do a miracle.
Soonyoung whose first question upon meeting the boy who would become his guide was: "But can you dance?"
Jihoon could and can. Amidst a sea of rumors to the contrary, Jihoon wanted this as badly as any of them from the very start.
"Better?" he asks after a long moment.
Soonyoung smiles up at him dopily. "You're magic."
"I need to keep working," he says instead of responding in kind. "That fine?"
"Do your thing. I'll just be down here."
This, Jihoon will never admit, is the part he himself would liken to prayer. Soonyoung fills his awareness with thorns and Jihoon, methodical and tactless, pares them back, one after another until the room shimmers in soft afterglow.
Soonyoung's temple grateful against Jihoon's knee, and Jihoon pressing back.