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fic: shoot to kill (my heart is a smoking gun) 10/?
Title: shoot to kill (my heart is a smoking gun)
Chapter: 10/to be determined
Fandom: Kpop: Infinite
Pairings/Characters: Sungyeol/Woohyun with a healthy side-helping of Sungyeol-Myungsoo BFFery and the rest of the OT7 in supporting roles
Genre: angst, romance (if these insecure emotional idiots can ever have anything as simple as romance), drama
Rating: R
Summary: How the hell is he supposed to make it through this day—through his goddamn life—while carrying around the memory of the way that Woohyun’s mouth tastes and the sounds he makes when he comes? Sungyeol has absolutely no idea what's going on between himself and Woohyun, much less why it's going on, and it doesn't seem likely that he'll figure it out any time soon.
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Previous chapter
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A/N: I probably won't keep posting this quickly consistently, but I couldn't hold this one back another day. I didn't figure y'all would complain. ;D
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In retrospect, Sungyeol will actually find it kind of funny. Sungjong’s whole thing lately has been being completely unimpressed by anything and everything his hyungs do, his nose stuck up in the air and his eyes perpetually rolling. Sungyeol knows it’s because he’s trying to make that transition from ‘adorable girly child’ to ‘attractive and respected man,’ and honestly he’s doing a pretty good job of it. But that doesn’t mean it doesn’t get annoying at times, so seeing Sungjong’s eyes go that wide and his mouth drop open like that—well, it’s kind of satisfying.
Or it is afterwards. Long, long afterwards. Because in the moment, Sungyeol is pretty convinced that he’s actually having a heart attack.
He and Woohyun stare at Sungjong, Sungjong stares back at them, nobody moves, and everything is complete incredulity and gaping stupidly. And then Sungjong makes this sound like a squeak—the girliest thing Sungyeol has heard out of him in months—and backs out of the room, slamming the door behind him.
Sungyeol’s chest feels like his ribs are trying to braid themselves together and he’s practically choking for breath. Woohyun looks like someone who’s always adored him just smacked him in the face. Obviously it takes them a minute to recover.
“I can talk to him,” Woohyun says after they manage to get themselves reasonably under control (and Sungyeol would never admit this, but it honestly makes him feel a little better to know that Woohyun can have a reaction to their thing that isn’t smug or matter-of-fact. There was something reassuring about how he looked just as shocked as Sungyeol felt. At least they’re on the same page in something).
“NO!” The only thing Sungyeol can possibly imagine that’s worse than Sungjong finding out—finding out like that—is Woohyun being the one to talk to him about it. “You—stay here. I’ll go.”
He pulls his shirt on, stumbling out of the room, his chest still a little bit tight. He searches the whole apartment for Sungjong, probably flushing a little too much whenever he makes eye contact with the other members (the ones who have absolutely no idea what Sungyeol and Woohyun get up to whenever they’re alone). After coming up maknae-less, it finally occurs to him that Sungjong would know that at least one of them would want to talk to him and that he’d have gone to the one place they all go when they most need privacy.
Sungjong has recovered himself by the time Sungyeol opens the door to the roof. He’s leaning against the balustrade, his arms crossed and his superior expression back firmly in place. He looks like a model posing for a magazine, a beautiful boy with the sun setting behind him. It irritates Sungyeol sometimes, how cool Sungjong always looks these days. He glares at the maknae, who flicks his hair out of his eyes with a swing of his neck as Sungyeol approaches.
“Took you long enough. Had to finish what you started?”
Sungyeol is usually the last one—perhaps after Woohyun—to let Sungjong talk to him like that. But he’s very, very aware at the moment that Sungjong is the one with all the power here, and judging by the expression on Sungjong’s face, the maknae is, too.
“I couldn’t find you,” Sungyeol says instead.
“Why did the fans vote you the smartest again?”
Sungyeol, for once, ignores the snark. “So about what you saw downstairs—“
“If you even think about insulting my intelligence by lying to me—“
Sungyeol cuts him off. “I wasn’t going to.”
Sungjong sniffs. “You better not.”
But the thing is, Sungyeol can’t figure out what to say next. How can he possibly explain to someone else what’s going on with him and Woohyun if he doesn’t know himself?
Apparently something of this shows on his face because Sungjong sighs the sigh of the long-suffering and uncrosses his arms. “Okay, hyung, the way I see it, it could be a couple of different things.”
Oh, this is going to be good.
“Either you two are secretly in love or like or whatever and are dating behind our backs—“
“That’s not it!”
Sungjong ignores his complete horror and continues. “Or this was the first time it’s happened....” He pauses, and the look on Sungyeol’s face must give him away because Sungjong nods as if his suspicions were confirmed and continues, “...or it’s a friends with benefits thing.”
Sungyeol shifts, feel as though his limbs are too long. “I guess...the last one?” It’s the closest, he guesses, but it still seems really far away from the truth. He and Woohyun don’t feel much like friends nowadays, even if they (mostly) were before all of this started.
Sungjong hums quietly. “And how long has this been going on?”
Sungyeol thinks back to that first night on the couch and tries to determine just how long ago that was. Time moves in weird ways for idols, and he’s really bad at keeping up with its passage. “A couple of months?” he offers finally. It’s not lost on him that his answers keep coming out more like questions.
Sungjong purses his lips. “Well, I guess I don’t need to ask what the truth behind your big cold war a couple of weeks ago was, then. I can only imagine how much worse your fights must be now. This does explain a lot, though.”
Sungyeol really doesn’t want to know what Sungjong thinks this explains. “It doesn’t mean anything. It’s just fooling around.” It’s true, so very true, but it sounds pathetic when he says it out loud like that.
“Does Myungsoo know?”
“What? No!” Sungyeol sputters
Sungjong just nods his head thoughtfully. “I thought maybe he did. That maybe he found out and that’s why things between you two have been so tense lately.”
“No!” And then a thought, one Sungyeol absolutely doesn’t want to voice but somehow ends up speaking anyway after a strained pause: “You don’t think he’d be like that, do you?” You don’t think he’d think I’m gross and disgusting? You don’t think he’d pull away even more?
Sungjong shrugs. “I wouldn’t think so, but you never know with people. They surprise you.”
They certainly do.
Sungjong laughs now, a wry twist to his lips. “And everyone thinks I’m the gay one in Infinite.”
Sungyeol chokes at that. Sputters, “I’m not gay!” Off Sungjong’s skeptically-raised eyebrow, he amends, “I still like girls. I still like girls more.” The first part is definitely true, and he thinks the second part is, too: that if a hot girl was into him and he could actually get five minutes alone with her, he’d drop Woohyun faster than Myungsoo can turn up the air conditioning when it’s hot outside. He’d understood what Woohyun meant when he said Sungyeol was just convenient—there probably were willing girls out there (less for him than for Woohyun, maybe, but girls all the same) and probably a lot of them were hot, but it wasn’t like they actually had access to them. They weren’t American rock stars in the seventies or something.
Sungjong is nodding thoughtfully, as if this is all a very interesting experiment he’s viewing in a laboratory. It should probably annoy Sungyeol, being treated like that, but instead it makes him feel better: Sungjong isn’t freaking out, he’s going with it. Maybe this whole thing isn’t as messed-up as he thought it was.
“It’s a really bad idea, you know.”
“Yeah, I—what?”
Sungjong narrows his eyes. “Woohyun is in love with Sunggyu.”
Sungyeol knows that. “I know that.”
“It’s really not a good idea to get involved with someone who’s in love with someone else.”
“We’re not ‘involved.’” Sungyeol practically shudders at the thought. “I told you it doesn’t mean anything.”
“Hyung, whatever happened between you two resulted in two weeks’ worth of stomping around and glaring at each other like you were planning the most painful possible ways to kill each other. If it didn’t mean anything, that wouldn’t have happened.”
Well. There’s truth in there, somewhere, though probably not where Sungong thinks it is. “That wasn’t about our—“ He flaps his hand around, trying to come up with a label. “—thing. That was about us saying really awful things to each other. Which we’ve done before.”
“You’ve never been that angry with each other for that long before,” Sungjong points out.
“We’d never said anything quite that awful.” Sungyeol’s voice isn’t very loud, and he doesn’t like the note of sheepishness there. Though probably anyone would be sheepish under the force of Sungjong’s gaze, or at least that’s what he tells himself.
“Whatever. What I’m saying is, you two are friends. Or you are when you aren’t fighting. I mean, your personalities clash a lot, but you really enjoy each other when you’re both in good moods, don’t you?”
Sungyeol hasn’t been in a ‘good mood’ for so long that he barely remembers what one feels like. But yeah, he remembers making Woohyun laugh a lot and enjoying doing it. He remembers asking him for fashion advice and then making fun of the ridiculous things he said, both of them grinning while tossing insults back and forth. He remembers throwing hearts and lessons in grease from Nam-trainer. He remembers all the times they joked around and plotted ways to torture the other members—Myungsoo's been his pranking partner in the past, but Woohyun's the only one who can actually keep up with his deviousness. They did used to enjoy each other. It just seems like that’s all dried up completely now that they’ve started messing around. Or not completely—they had laughed together in the bathroom, soaking wet and ridiculous (and honestly, that’s the closest Sungyeol has felt to Woohyun since the beginning). It isn’t gone, it’s just weirder, and rougher around the edges and harder to get to, like the secret they’re carrying around is building up around it, thick and gunky.
“I guess,” is all Sungyeol says, because it’s not like he can say any of that to Sungjong.
“And I’m willing to bet, knowing you two, that you haven’t actually sat down and negotiated what all this means and where it is or isn’t headed, have you?”
Sungyeol has to look away at that, but he’s bristling a bit at the way Sungjong is speaking to him. Not as patronizing as usual, he’s really matter-of-fact, actually. But it grates. Sungjong is the youngest, even if he doesn’t act that way when the cameras aren’t around.
“These things always end up messy, because when you assume the other person is on the same page, he never is. You’re both making assumptions left and right, especially you—don’t look at me like that, hyung, I know you—and you’re going to find out that most of them are wrong. And it’s just a million times more complicated since he has feelings for someone else.”
“And you’d know this how, all-knowing one?” Sungyeol’s voice isn’t nearly as dry as he wants it to be, probably because his throat is. Most of what Sungjong is saying isn’t new to him, it’s just that hearing someone else saying it is rougher than he imagined it would be.
“I’ve had girlfriends,” Sungjong replies. “And I pay attention, which is more than you’ve been doing lately.”
“So that’s what makes you fit to judge, I guess,” Sungyeol says bitterly.
“I’m not judging, hyung. If you and Woohyun had really talked about it and decided this is what you both want, then I wouldn’t care at all. It’s the fact that you both clearly have no idea what you’re doing that worries me.” He sighs again. “Look, hyung. Have you asked yourself why you’re doing this and why Woohyun is?”
Sungyeol can’t keep the hysterical note out of his laughter. “Have I done anything else for the past two months?”
Sungjong’s mouth twitches. “So you’ve asked, but you don’t have an answer.”
Sungyeol raises his hands, empty.
Sungjong lifts his eyes to the sky, like this is going to be harder than he thought. He plops down on the ground. “Okay. Let’s start with you, then, since hopefully you’re the one you know better.”
Sungyeol snorts, folding his legs up as he sits down beside his friend.
“Why are you doing this?” Sungjong asks.
“Because I’m sexually frustrated and there aren’t any other options?” Sungyeol offers sarcastically. The rough ground beneath him is warm with the late afternoon sun, and there’s something strangely comforting about it. It’s probably why he hasn’t already fled from this conversation already.
“Oh, please. We’re all sexually frustrated and don’t have any options, but you won’t walk in on me making out with Hoya-hyung.” Sungyeol shudders at that mental picture and Sungjong smirks before continuing, “Because the rest of us just deal with it because we have to, seeing as we don’t like other guys.” Sungyeol opens his mouth to argue, but Sungjong cuts him off before he can start. “Please, hyung. I saw the way you two were kissing. You may not be in love or anything, but the attraction at least is there. So what if you also like girls? Clearly a guy can do it for you, too.”
Sungyeol scowls. “So we do it for each other.” (And this is the first time he’s ever really confronted the truth that he does it for Woohyun just as much as Woohyun does it for him. It’s a big thought, bigger than he can deal with right now, so he just shivers and sets it aside.) “We’re hormonal young guys, we’re in close proximity, we aren’t allowed to date and we’re too tightly controlled to go out and have one-night stands. Doesn’t it make sense that we’re fooling around together?”
“Sure,” Sungjong acknowledges. “Except that you were apparently so freaked out about it you acted like a zombie kept alive purely on the power of caffeine for weeks. And then you and Woohyun obviously said such terrible things to each other that you generated enough resentment to fuel a mid-sized city. And yet you’re still fooling around. People don’t put up with that much angst just for a lay, not unless they’re getting something else out of it. You just stick with your hand instead.”
“I don’t know, okay?” The words burst out of him. “It really weirded me out! It came out of nowhere and then it kept happening and I was really confused—I’m still confused!—but I can’t actually make it all stop!” He shoves his hand through his hair, then yanks on it for good measure (the pain makes him think of Woohyun, and oh, God, his brain did not just go there).
Sungjong sits in thoughtful silence for a moment. “Well, you could if you wanted to. Woohyun’s pride wouldn’t let him pressure anyone if they weren’t willing. If you haven’t stopped it, that must mean you don’t want to.”
Sungyeol props his elbows up on his knees, rubbing his eyelids with the heels of his hands. It’s true. It’s all true, and it’s all stuff he’s said to himself before, but that doesn’t help.
Sungjong makes an exasperated sound. “Okay, let’s start from a different angle. How did it start? You said it came out of nowhere, but that can’t be true. Nothing comes from nothing.”
Sungyeol trips over his words a lot, trying to explain that soju-soaked night on the couch without actually sharing too much information. When he’s done, Sungjong is resting his cheek on his palm, examining him closely.
“He was already drunk when you got home?” Sungjong asked.
“Well, not drunk, maybe. But he wasn’t completely sober.”
“And why did he say he was drinking?”
“’The usual.’ That’s what he said.” Sungyeol remembers that clearly.
“And you assumed ‘the usual’ meant—“
“Him and Sunggyu-hyung, yeah.”
“Hmmm. And why did you start drinking, too? Why didn’t you go to bed? It was late—you must have been exhausted.”
Sungyeol looks away, leaning back against the still-warm wall behind him. The sun has dipped down below the heights of the city now, but the air is still pleasantly warm. “I’d had a variety show. And acted like an idiot. I wanted to forget.”
Sungjong doesn’t say anything for a while, the two of them listening to the sounds of the city below them, traffic and wind and someone’s music, distorted by distance till the notes are almost pixilated into static. When Sungjong finally speaks, his voice is softer than it’s been so far. “So maybe you were both feeling unwanted?”
Okay, that’s a little too much. “Uh—what?”
Sungjong shrugs. “Sunggyu-hyung doesn’t want Woohyun-hyung, no matter how hard Woohyun tries to win him over. And you feel like the variety shows want you for all the wrong reasons, not for any of the reasons you’d like to be wanted. And you were both drunk and tense and—“
Sungyeol isn’t stupid. “You’re saying this is some sort of validation?” He shifts restlessly at the thought. “Like, ‘well, at least this person wants me’?”
Sungjong meets his eyes levelly. “Why do you want Woohyun to be doing it?” Sungyeol makes a startled noise, jerking back a bit, but Sungjong just holds his gaze. “I’m serious. What would be the best of all possible scenarios—if you were to ask him flat-out and he had to tell the truth, what do you hope he would say?
Sungyeol is so not used to thinking like this. It chafes. He resorts to sarcasm as always. “That I’m the sexiest thing on the planet and he couldn’t resist me?”
Sungjong rolls his eyes again, but the flippancy doesn’t distract him. “Be serious, hyung.”
“I don’t know. I don’t know!” Everything he can think of is a nightmare, some worse than others. That Woohyun is bored and is just playing with Sungyeol and that he runs back to Sunggyu so they can laugh about it afterwards. That Woohyun is trying to get back at Sunggyu and actually really wants him to find out. That Woohyun is punishing himself because Sungyeol is the lowest of the low and he thinks Sungyeol is all he deserves.
“Think about it, hyung,” Sungjong presses.
“I don’t want to!” He doesn’t want to think about this. He wants to think about anything but this. Why is he letting Sungjong push him into this? Why does he keep letting himself get pushed around into things he doesn’t want?
“Stop being a baby! This is getting ridiculous! If you really want to get a handle on why you’re both behaving this way, you have to be honest.”
Sungyeol shakes his head, burying his face in his hands and moaning. Sungjong swats the back of his head, but he just pouts.
“You are so frustrating! Fine! Let’s do it another way: if you asked him, which would you rather him say: that he’d be doing this with absolutely any other marginally attractive guy who was available and willing or that there is something special about you?”
Sungyeol’s face screws up like he’s just tasted a lemon at the word ‘special,’ but underneath that he’s starting to feel slightly sick. Because he knows what he wants the answer to that question to be and he also knows what the answer really is. He must look stricken, because Sungjong leans forward and puts a hand on his shoulder. Sungyeol tenses a little bit; this isn’t their way. Neither of them are demonstrative; they both do fanservice because they have to, but away from the fans’ eyes, both of them merely tolerate the rest of the members’ touchier ways. Neither of them are the type to initiate any kind of physical contact.
“You want him to want you, don’t you.” It isn’t a question.
Sungyeol’s laugh cracks. “You must be loving this, right? One of your hyungs is a complete mess and you get to see him all vulnerable.”
“Actually,” Sungjong says, voice dry, letting his hand fall from Sungyeol’s shoulder, “it’s really annoying and a total waste of my incredibly valuable time. I don’t know why I’m putting up with you.”
That makes him feel better; he’s never liked when things get too serious (too vulnerable). A Sungjong who can be dry and superior is a Sungjong he can actually talk to. “It’s not so much that I want him to want me—“
“You just want someone to,” Sungjong finishes. “Yes, hyung, this is the problem. Because it’s not about Woohyun for you or even about you being horny. It’s about you.”
He can’t handle this, all this honesty, not like this. “Isn’t everything?” he jokes.
Sungjong ignores him. “And Woohyun has to be reminded all of the time that Sunggyu doesn’t want him.”
“You’re telling me that that’s it? That Woohyun keeps dragging me into closets and ripping my clothes off because he wants to prove to himself that someone wants him even if Sunggyu doesn’t?”
Sungjong grimaces at the ripping of clothes part, but he shakes his head. “Of course I’m not telling you that. There could be a million reasons why he’s doing it—for all I know, he lost a bet with Hoya. I’m just saying that that seems the most reasonable explanation, considering what you’ve reluctantly and completely not-eloquently told me.”
Well. That doesn’t seem so bad. And after Sungjong had gone on and on about them being on different pages. “If we’re doing it for the same reason, then—“
“No, no, no, no, no.” Sungjong cuts him off, holding up a pale hand. “Don’t go thinking that that makes everything okay. Did you miss the part where I told you straight-out that that’s just the most reasonable explanation and that it could be one of the others? You’re assuming again, and that’s bad. If you really want to know, you have to talk to him.”
But Sungyeol is starting to feel giddy at the idea of having an answer and it being way less complicated than he’d originally thought. “But it doesn’t matter, right? It’s not about Woohyun—it’s about me. For me, at least. So what if he’s still in love with Sunggyu? That’s better, right? Because that way we can both feel wanted without actual emotions entering it! Where’s the downside to all this?”
Sungjong looks appalled. “Um, the fact that you’re using each other?”
“But it’s mutual using-ness!” Sungyeol reorts, hands flying all over the place. “I make him feel wanted, he makes me feel wanted, we both get off, it doesn’t mean anything!”
If Sungjong was standing up, he’d probably be stomping his foot by now, newfound masculinity be damned. “How many times have I told you that there might be another reason he’s doing it? And even if there isn’t, this will still probably end badly—you don’t use your friends, not for something like this. You don’t do that. You might if it was just for sex, but it’s not just for sex. It’s not like you two are strangers, you’re bandmates and you live together and you’re friends—emotions are going to get all tangled up and doing anything this serious out of neediness is a horrible idea and—hyung, are you listening to me at all?”
Because Sungyeol has jumped to his feet, feeling lighter than he has in weeks. Okay, so it’s totally pathetic that he feels so terrible about himself that he’s using Nam Woohyun’s mouth to make himself feel better. So what? It could be a lot worse. This is an explanation he can live with, and that’s what he’s been looking for all along.
“Thanks, Sungjongie!” He reaches out and grabs Sungjong by the upper arms, pulling the startled maknae to his feet. “I feel a lot better now.”
“Hyung! You’re not listening—“
“I really needed that. You’re really the best, has anyone told you that?”
He pats Sungjong on the head (in his excitement he’s forgotten that Sungjong hates that more than anything, but even if he’d remembered, he’d probably still have done it) and scampers off in the direction of the door to the staircase, not even hearing Sungjong's exasperated protests behind him.
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Sungyeol is in a great mood for the rest of the night. He’s well aware that he took away exactly what Sungjong didn’t want him to take from that conversation, but he doesn’t care. He finally has some answers and license not to keep killing himself over this, and he can almost taste his own relief.
Dinner’s ready by the time he reaches the apartment, and he grabs his chopsticks with a grin for the rest of the members. Woohyun keeps shooting him significant glances, but Sungyeol just smiles back cheerily. The others shoot him strange looks as he clowns his way through dinner—and he notices Myungsoo especially keeps looking at him strangely—but his high spirits are contagious to everyone but Sungjong, who joins them soon after and of course spends the entire meal scowling. It isn’t until Sunggyu and Dongwoo are doing the dishes and the rest of the members have scattered that Woohyun grabs Sungyeol by the sleeve and tugs him into his bedroom.
"Oookay," Woohyun says, as soon as the door is closed. "I can't say exactly what I was expecting you to be like after talking with Sungjong, but this is definitely not it."
Sungyeol laughs. “Sungjong is awesome, you know that?”
The look Woohyun gives him suggests that he’s gone insane. "So he’s not going to tell anyone?"
Oh. Huh. "We...didn't actually talk about that."
“What? How could you not talk about that? What the hell did you talk about?”
Sungyeol shrugs, pretty unconcerned. “Stuff. But I don’t think he’ll say anything. I wouldn’t worry.” And then he claps a gaping Woohyun on the shoulder and strolls back out into the living room, plopping down beside Hoya to play video games. This has been a good day.
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Next chapter
Chapter: 10/to be determined
Fandom: Kpop: Infinite
Pairings/Characters: Sungyeol/Woohyun with a healthy side-helping of Sungyeol-Myungsoo BFFery and the rest of the OT7 in supporting roles
Genre: angst, romance (if these insecure emotional idiots can ever have anything as simple as romance), drama
Rating: R
Summary: How the hell is he supposed to make it through this day—through his goddamn life—while carrying around the memory of the way that Woohyun’s mouth tastes and the sounds he makes when he comes? Sungyeol has absolutely no idea what's going on between himself and Woohyun, much less why it's going on, and it doesn't seem likely that he'll figure it out any time soon.
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Previous chapter
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A/N: I probably won't keep posting this quickly consistently, but I couldn't hold this one back another day. I didn't figure y'all would complain. ;D
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In retrospect, Sungyeol will actually find it kind of funny. Sungjong’s whole thing lately has been being completely unimpressed by anything and everything his hyungs do, his nose stuck up in the air and his eyes perpetually rolling. Sungyeol knows it’s because he’s trying to make that transition from ‘adorable girly child’ to ‘attractive and respected man,’ and honestly he’s doing a pretty good job of it. But that doesn’t mean it doesn’t get annoying at times, so seeing Sungjong’s eyes go that wide and his mouth drop open like that—well, it’s kind of satisfying.
Or it is afterwards. Long, long afterwards. Because in the moment, Sungyeol is pretty convinced that he’s actually having a heart attack.
He and Woohyun stare at Sungjong, Sungjong stares back at them, nobody moves, and everything is complete incredulity and gaping stupidly. And then Sungjong makes this sound like a squeak—the girliest thing Sungyeol has heard out of him in months—and backs out of the room, slamming the door behind him.
Sungyeol’s chest feels like his ribs are trying to braid themselves together and he’s practically choking for breath. Woohyun looks like someone who’s always adored him just smacked him in the face. Obviously it takes them a minute to recover.
“I can talk to him,” Woohyun says after they manage to get themselves reasonably under control (and Sungyeol would never admit this, but it honestly makes him feel a little better to know that Woohyun can have a reaction to their thing that isn’t smug or matter-of-fact. There was something reassuring about how he looked just as shocked as Sungyeol felt. At least they’re on the same page in something).
“NO!” The only thing Sungyeol can possibly imagine that’s worse than Sungjong finding out—finding out like that—is Woohyun being the one to talk to him about it. “You—stay here. I’ll go.”
He pulls his shirt on, stumbling out of the room, his chest still a little bit tight. He searches the whole apartment for Sungjong, probably flushing a little too much whenever he makes eye contact with the other members (the ones who have absolutely no idea what Sungyeol and Woohyun get up to whenever they’re alone). After coming up maknae-less, it finally occurs to him that Sungjong would know that at least one of them would want to talk to him and that he’d have gone to the one place they all go when they most need privacy.
Sungjong has recovered himself by the time Sungyeol opens the door to the roof. He’s leaning against the balustrade, his arms crossed and his superior expression back firmly in place. He looks like a model posing for a magazine, a beautiful boy with the sun setting behind him. It irritates Sungyeol sometimes, how cool Sungjong always looks these days. He glares at the maknae, who flicks his hair out of his eyes with a swing of his neck as Sungyeol approaches.
“Took you long enough. Had to finish what you started?”
Sungyeol is usually the last one—perhaps after Woohyun—to let Sungjong talk to him like that. But he’s very, very aware at the moment that Sungjong is the one with all the power here, and judging by the expression on Sungjong’s face, the maknae is, too.
“I couldn’t find you,” Sungyeol says instead.
“Why did the fans vote you the smartest again?”
Sungyeol, for once, ignores the snark. “So about what you saw downstairs—“
“If you even think about insulting my intelligence by lying to me—“
Sungyeol cuts him off. “I wasn’t going to.”
Sungjong sniffs. “You better not.”
But the thing is, Sungyeol can’t figure out what to say next. How can he possibly explain to someone else what’s going on with him and Woohyun if he doesn’t know himself?
Apparently something of this shows on his face because Sungjong sighs the sigh of the long-suffering and uncrosses his arms. “Okay, hyung, the way I see it, it could be a couple of different things.”
Oh, this is going to be good.
“Either you two are secretly in love or like or whatever and are dating behind our backs—“
“That’s not it!”
Sungjong ignores his complete horror and continues. “Or this was the first time it’s happened....” He pauses, and the look on Sungyeol’s face must give him away because Sungjong nods as if his suspicions were confirmed and continues, “...or it’s a friends with benefits thing.”
Sungyeol shifts, feel as though his limbs are too long. “I guess...the last one?” It’s the closest, he guesses, but it still seems really far away from the truth. He and Woohyun don’t feel much like friends nowadays, even if they (mostly) were before all of this started.
Sungjong hums quietly. “And how long has this been going on?”
Sungyeol thinks back to that first night on the couch and tries to determine just how long ago that was. Time moves in weird ways for idols, and he’s really bad at keeping up with its passage. “A couple of months?” he offers finally. It’s not lost on him that his answers keep coming out more like questions.
Sungjong purses his lips. “Well, I guess I don’t need to ask what the truth behind your big cold war a couple of weeks ago was, then. I can only imagine how much worse your fights must be now. This does explain a lot, though.”
Sungyeol really doesn’t want to know what Sungjong thinks this explains. “It doesn’t mean anything. It’s just fooling around.” It’s true, so very true, but it sounds pathetic when he says it out loud like that.
“Does Myungsoo know?”
“What? No!” Sungyeol sputters
Sungjong just nods his head thoughtfully. “I thought maybe he did. That maybe he found out and that’s why things between you two have been so tense lately.”
“No!” And then a thought, one Sungyeol absolutely doesn’t want to voice but somehow ends up speaking anyway after a strained pause: “You don’t think he’d be like that, do you?” You don’t think he’d think I’m gross and disgusting? You don’t think he’d pull away even more?
Sungjong shrugs. “I wouldn’t think so, but you never know with people. They surprise you.”
They certainly do.
Sungjong laughs now, a wry twist to his lips. “And everyone thinks I’m the gay one in Infinite.”
Sungyeol chokes at that. Sputters, “I’m not gay!” Off Sungjong’s skeptically-raised eyebrow, he amends, “I still like girls. I still like girls more.” The first part is definitely true, and he thinks the second part is, too: that if a hot girl was into him and he could actually get five minutes alone with her, he’d drop Woohyun faster than Myungsoo can turn up the air conditioning when it’s hot outside. He’d understood what Woohyun meant when he said Sungyeol was just convenient—there probably were willing girls out there (less for him than for Woohyun, maybe, but girls all the same) and probably a lot of them were hot, but it wasn’t like they actually had access to them. They weren’t American rock stars in the seventies or something.
Sungjong is nodding thoughtfully, as if this is all a very interesting experiment he’s viewing in a laboratory. It should probably annoy Sungyeol, being treated like that, but instead it makes him feel better: Sungjong isn’t freaking out, he’s going with it. Maybe this whole thing isn’t as messed-up as he thought it was.
“It’s a really bad idea, you know.”
“Yeah, I—what?”
Sungjong narrows his eyes. “Woohyun is in love with Sunggyu.”
Sungyeol knows that. “I know that.”
“It’s really not a good idea to get involved with someone who’s in love with someone else.”
“We’re not ‘involved.’” Sungyeol practically shudders at the thought. “I told you it doesn’t mean anything.”
“Hyung, whatever happened between you two resulted in two weeks’ worth of stomping around and glaring at each other like you were planning the most painful possible ways to kill each other. If it didn’t mean anything, that wouldn’t have happened.”
Well. There’s truth in there, somewhere, though probably not where Sungong thinks it is. “That wasn’t about our—“ He flaps his hand around, trying to come up with a label. “—thing. That was about us saying really awful things to each other. Which we’ve done before.”
“You’ve never been that angry with each other for that long before,” Sungjong points out.
“We’d never said anything quite that awful.” Sungyeol’s voice isn’t very loud, and he doesn’t like the note of sheepishness there. Though probably anyone would be sheepish under the force of Sungjong’s gaze, or at least that’s what he tells himself.
“Whatever. What I’m saying is, you two are friends. Or you are when you aren’t fighting. I mean, your personalities clash a lot, but you really enjoy each other when you’re both in good moods, don’t you?”
Sungyeol hasn’t been in a ‘good mood’ for so long that he barely remembers what one feels like. But yeah, he remembers making Woohyun laugh a lot and enjoying doing it. He remembers asking him for fashion advice and then making fun of the ridiculous things he said, both of them grinning while tossing insults back and forth. He remembers throwing hearts and lessons in grease from Nam-trainer. He remembers all the times they joked around and plotted ways to torture the other members—Myungsoo's been his pranking partner in the past, but Woohyun's the only one who can actually keep up with his deviousness. They did used to enjoy each other. It just seems like that’s all dried up completely now that they’ve started messing around. Or not completely—they had laughed together in the bathroom, soaking wet and ridiculous (and honestly, that’s the closest Sungyeol has felt to Woohyun since the beginning). It isn’t gone, it’s just weirder, and rougher around the edges and harder to get to, like the secret they’re carrying around is building up around it, thick and gunky.
“I guess,” is all Sungyeol says, because it’s not like he can say any of that to Sungjong.
“And I’m willing to bet, knowing you two, that you haven’t actually sat down and negotiated what all this means and where it is or isn’t headed, have you?”
Sungyeol has to look away at that, but he’s bristling a bit at the way Sungjong is speaking to him. Not as patronizing as usual, he’s really matter-of-fact, actually. But it grates. Sungjong is the youngest, even if he doesn’t act that way when the cameras aren’t around.
“These things always end up messy, because when you assume the other person is on the same page, he never is. You’re both making assumptions left and right, especially you—don’t look at me like that, hyung, I know you—and you’re going to find out that most of them are wrong. And it’s just a million times more complicated since he has feelings for someone else.”
“And you’d know this how, all-knowing one?” Sungyeol’s voice isn’t nearly as dry as he wants it to be, probably because his throat is. Most of what Sungjong is saying isn’t new to him, it’s just that hearing someone else saying it is rougher than he imagined it would be.
“I’ve had girlfriends,” Sungjong replies. “And I pay attention, which is more than you’ve been doing lately.”
“So that’s what makes you fit to judge, I guess,” Sungyeol says bitterly.
“I’m not judging, hyung. If you and Woohyun had really talked about it and decided this is what you both want, then I wouldn’t care at all. It’s the fact that you both clearly have no idea what you’re doing that worries me.” He sighs again. “Look, hyung. Have you asked yourself why you’re doing this and why Woohyun is?”
Sungyeol can’t keep the hysterical note out of his laughter. “Have I done anything else for the past two months?”
Sungjong’s mouth twitches. “So you’ve asked, but you don’t have an answer.”
Sungyeol raises his hands, empty.
Sungjong lifts his eyes to the sky, like this is going to be harder than he thought. He plops down on the ground. “Okay. Let’s start with you, then, since hopefully you’re the one you know better.”
Sungyeol snorts, folding his legs up as he sits down beside his friend.
“Why are you doing this?” Sungjong asks.
“Because I’m sexually frustrated and there aren’t any other options?” Sungyeol offers sarcastically. The rough ground beneath him is warm with the late afternoon sun, and there’s something strangely comforting about it. It’s probably why he hasn’t already fled from this conversation already.
“Oh, please. We’re all sexually frustrated and don’t have any options, but you won’t walk in on me making out with Hoya-hyung.” Sungyeol shudders at that mental picture and Sungjong smirks before continuing, “Because the rest of us just deal with it because we have to, seeing as we don’t like other guys.” Sungyeol opens his mouth to argue, but Sungjong cuts him off before he can start. “Please, hyung. I saw the way you two were kissing. You may not be in love or anything, but the attraction at least is there. So what if you also like girls? Clearly a guy can do it for you, too.”
Sungyeol scowls. “So we do it for each other.” (And this is the first time he’s ever really confronted the truth that he does it for Woohyun just as much as Woohyun does it for him. It’s a big thought, bigger than he can deal with right now, so he just shivers and sets it aside.) “We’re hormonal young guys, we’re in close proximity, we aren’t allowed to date and we’re too tightly controlled to go out and have one-night stands. Doesn’t it make sense that we’re fooling around together?”
“Sure,” Sungjong acknowledges. “Except that you were apparently so freaked out about it you acted like a zombie kept alive purely on the power of caffeine for weeks. And then you and Woohyun obviously said such terrible things to each other that you generated enough resentment to fuel a mid-sized city. And yet you’re still fooling around. People don’t put up with that much angst just for a lay, not unless they’re getting something else out of it. You just stick with your hand instead.”
“I don’t know, okay?” The words burst out of him. “It really weirded me out! It came out of nowhere and then it kept happening and I was really confused—I’m still confused!—but I can’t actually make it all stop!” He shoves his hand through his hair, then yanks on it for good measure (the pain makes him think of Woohyun, and oh, God, his brain did not just go there).
Sungjong sits in thoughtful silence for a moment. “Well, you could if you wanted to. Woohyun’s pride wouldn’t let him pressure anyone if they weren’t willing. If you haven’t stopped it, that must mean you don’t want to.”
Sungyeol props his elbows up on his knees, rubbing his eyelids with the heels of his hands. It’s true. It’s all true, and it’s all stuff he’s said to himself before, but that doesn’t help.
Sungjong makes an exasperated sound. “Okay, let’s start from a different angle. How did it start? You said it came out of nowhere, but that can’t be true. Nothing comes from nothing.”
Sungyeol trips over his words a lot, trying to explain that soju-soaked night on the couch without actually sharing too much information. When he’s done, Sungjong is resting his cheek on his palm, examining him closely.
“He was already drunk when you got home?” Sungjong asked.
“Well, not drunk, maybe. But he wasn’t completely sober.”
“And why did he say he was drinking?”
“’The usual.’ That’s what he said.” Sungyeol remembers that clearly.
“And you assumed ‘the usual’ meant—“
“Him and Sunggyu-hyung, yeah.”
“Hmmm. And why did you start drinking, too? Why didn’t you go to bed? It was late—you must have been exhausted.”
Sungyeol looks away, leaning back against the still-warm wall behind him. The sun has dipped down below the heights of the city now, but the air is still pleasantly warm. “I’d had a variety show. And acted like an idiot. I wanted to forget.”
Sungjong doesn’t say anything for a while, the two of them listening to the sounds of the city below them, traffic and wind and someone’s music, distorted by distance till the notes are almost pixilated into static. When Sungjong finally speaks, his voice is softer than it’s been so far. “So maybe you were both feeling unwanted?”
Okay, that’s a little too much. “Uh—what?”
Sungjong shrugs. “Sunggyu-hyung doesn’t want Woohyun-hyung, no matter how hard Woohyun tries to win him over. And you feel like the variety shows want you for all the wrong reasons, not for any of the reasons you’d like to be wanted. And you were both drunk and tense and—“
Sungyeol isn’t stupid. “You’re saying this is some sort of validation?” He shifts restlessly at the thought. “Like, ‘well, at least this person wants me’?”
Sungjong meets his eyes levelly. “Why do you want Woohyun to be doing it?” Sungyeol makes a startled noise, jerking back a bit, but Sungjong just holds his gaze. “I’m serious. What would be the best of all possible scenarios—if you were to ask him flat-out and he had to tell the truth, what do you hope he would say?
Sungyeol is so not used to thinking like this. It chafes. He resorts to sarcasm as always. “That I’m the sexiest thing on the planet and he couldn’t resist me?”
Sungjong rolls his eyes again, but the flippancy doesn’t distract him. “Be serious, hyung.”
“I don’t know. I don’t know!” Everything he can think of is a nightmare, some worse than others. That Woohyun is bored and is just playing with Sungyeol and that he runs back to Sunggyu so they can laugh about it afterwards. That Woohyun is trying to get back at Sunggyu and actually really wants him to find out. That Woohyun is punishing himself because Sungyeol is the lowest of the low and he thinks Sungyeol is all he deserves.
“Think about it, hyung,” Sungjong presses.
“I don’t want to!” He doesn’t want to think about this. He wants to think about anything but this. Why is he letting Sungjong push him into this? Why does he keep letting himself get pushed around into things he doesn’t want?
“Stop being a baby! This is getting ridiculous! If you really want to get a handle on why you’re both behaving this way, you have to be honest.”
Sungyeol shakes his head, burying his face in his hands and moaning. Sungjong swats the back of his head, but he just pouts.
“You are so frustrating! Fine! Let’s do it another way: if you asked him, which would you rather him say: that he’d be doing this with absolutely any other marginally attractive guy who was available and willing or that there is something special about you?”
Sungyeol’s face screws up like he’s just tasted a lemon at the word ‘special,’ but underneath that he’s starting to feel slightly sick. Because he knows what he wants the answer to that question to be and he also knows what the answer really is. He must look stricken, because Sungjong leans forward and puts a hand on his shoulder. Sungyeol tenses a little bit; this isn’t their way. Neither of them are demonstrative; they both do fanservice because they have to, but away from the fans’ eyes, both of them merely tolerate the rest of the members’ touchier ways. Neither of them are the type to initiate any kind of physical contact.
“You want him to want you, don’t you.” It isn’t a question.
Sungyeol’s laugh cracks. “You must be loving this, right? One of your hyungs is a complete mess and you get to see him all vulnerable.”
“Actually,” Sungjong says, voice dry, letting his hand fall from Sungyeol’s shoulder, “it’s really annoying and a total waste of my incredibly valuable time. I don’t know why I’m putting up with you.”
That makes him feel better; he’s never liked when things get too serious (too vulnerable). A Sungjong who can be dry and superior is a Sungjong he can actually talk to. “It’s not so much that I want him to want me—“
“You just want someone to,” Sungjong finishes. “Yes, hyung, this is the problem. Because it’s not about Woohyun for you or even about you being horny. It’s about you.”
He can’t handle this, all this honesty, not like this. “Isn’t everything?” he jokes.
Sungjong ignores him. “And Woohyun has to be reminded all of the time that Sunggyu doesn’t want him.”
“You’re telling me that that’s it? That Woohyun keeps dragging me into closets and ripping my clothes off because he wants to prove to himself that someone wants him even if Sunggyu doesn’t?”
Sungjong grimaces at the ripping of clothes part, but he shakes his head. “Of course I’m not telling you that. There could be a million reasons why he’s doing it—for all I know, he lost a bet with Hoya. I’m just saying that that seems the most reasonable explanation, considering what you’ve reluctantly and completely not-eloquently told me.”
Well. That doesn’t seem so bad. And after Sungjong had gone on and on about them being on different pages. “If we’re doing it for the same reason, then—“
“No, no, no, no, no.” Sungjong cuts him off, holding up a pale hand. “Don’t go thinking that that makes everything okay. Did you miss the part where I told you straight-out that that’s just the most reasonable explanation and that it could be one of the others? You’re assuming again, and that’s bad. If you really want to know, you have to talk to him.”
But Sungyeol is starting to feel giddy at the idea of having an answer and it being way less complicated than he’d originally thought. “But it doesn’t matter, right? It’s not about Woohyun—it’s about me. For me, at least. So what if he’s still in love with Sunggyu? That’s better, right? Because that way we can both feel wanted without actual emotions entering it! Where’s the downside to all this?”
Sungjong looks appalled. “Um, the fact that you’re using each other?”
“But it’s mutual using-ness!” Sungyeol reorts, hands flying all over the place. “I make him feel wanted, he makes me feel wanted, we both get off, it doesn’t mean anything!”
If Sungjong was standing up, he’d probably be stomping his foot by now, newfound masculinity be damned. “How many times have I told you that there might be another reason he’s doing it? And even if there isn’t, this will still probably end badly—you don’t use your friends, not for something like this. You don’t do that. You might if it was just for sex, but it’s not just for sex. It’s not like you two are strangers, you’re bandmates and you live together and you’re friends—emotions are going to get all tangled up and doing anything this serious out of neediness is a horrible idea and—hyung, are you listening to me at all?”
Because Sungyeol has jumped to his feet, feeling lighter than he has in weeks. Okay, so it’s totally pathetic that he feels so terrible about himself that he’s using Nam Woohyun’s mouth to make himself feel better. So what? It could be a lot worse. This is an explanation he can live with, and that’s what he’s been looking for all along.
“Thanks, Sungjongie!” He reaches out and grabs Sungjong by the upper arms, pulling the startled maknae to his feet. “I feel a lot better now.”
“Hyung! You’re not listening—“
“I really needed that. You’re really the best, has anyone told you that?”
He pats Sungjong on the head (in his excitement he’s forgotten that Sungjong hates that more than anything, but even if he’d remembered, he’d probably still have done it) and scampers off in the direction of the door to the staircase, not even hearing Sungjong's exasperated protests behind him.
--
Sungyeol is in a great mood for the rest of the night. He’s well aware that he took away exactly what Sungjong didn’t want him to take from that conversation, but he doesn’t care. He finally has some answers and license not to keep killing himself over this, and he can almost taste his own relief.
Dinner’s ready by the time he reaches the apartment, and he grabs his chopsticks with a grin for the rest of the members. Woohyun keeps shooting him significant glances, but Sungyeol just smiles back cheerily. The others shoot him strange looks as he clowns his way through dinner—and he notices Myungsoo especially keeps looking at him strangely—but his high spirits are contagious to everyone but Sungjong, who joins them soon after and of course spends the entire meal scowling. It isn’t until Sunggyu and Dongwoo are doing the dishes and the rest of the members have scattered that Woohyun grabs Sungyeol by the sleeve and tugs him into his bedroom.
"Oookay," Woohyun says, as soon as the door is closed. "I can't say exactly what I was expecting you to be like after talking with Sungjong, but this is definitely not it."
Sungyeol laughs. “Sungjong is awesome, you know that?”
The look Woohyun gives him suggests that he’s gone insane. "So he’s not going to tell anyone?"
Oh. Huh. "We...didn't actually talk about that."
“What? How could you not talk about that? What the hell did you talk about?”
Sungyeol shrugs, pretty unconcerned. “Stuff. But I don’t think he’ll say anything. I wouldn’t worry.” And then he claps a gaping Woohyun on the shoulder and strolls back out into the living room, plopping down beside Hoya to play video games. This has been a good day.
--
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