Work Text:
Mood: Two Slow Dancers by Mitski
It would be a hundred times easier if we were young again,
But as it is, and it is,
We’re just two slow dancers
Last ones out
Riki was used to the heaviness settled onto his bones, and the thought was honestly a bit fucked up, seeing as he was only eighteen. For his age, he knew too much, but also nothing at all.
That was the matter with many of them, if he had to be honest. Idols, he had scoffed several times in his head. That’s what they were called, what people viewed them as. They saw someone worth idolizing, when oftentimes the reality was they all were a bunch of really messed up kids.
Scared shitless kids who were roped into the industry way too young and gave everything up just to be thrown at the wolves with no way to defend themselves, forced to bear the constant scrutiny and lay helpless as the masses picked them apart.
Riki was too familiar with the whole process. He had been, after all, just fourteen. And then fifteen, then sixteen, and seventeen, and now eighteen. Years had passed him by in a flash, rendering him into the boy-shaped mold of bones, skin, heart and nerves he was now.
The heaviness in his limbs was a reminder of just how much he had sacrificed to get where he was, how much he would be losing if he someday decided to surrender.
He swallowed a few times to get rid of the uneasy feeling of dryness in his throat, and slightly turned his head away from the car window he had been leaning against, watching Seoul pass him by in a whirl of tall buildings and gray skies.
In the seat next to him, Sunoo slept soundly, eyelids firmly shut and lips slightly parted from the little puffs of breath coming out of them.
Riki watched with rapt attention as Sunoo’s chest rose and fell rhythmically, unable to tear his eyes away from him.
He only ever allowed himself to truly look at Sunoo when the other boy was asleep. When he was sure he couldn’t look back.
In those moments Riki greedily drank in the sight of him, even if it made the ache in his chest worse tenfold.
He watched him as one would with a piece of art, beautiful yet untouchable, until it felt too painful for him to keep looking.
Only then would he tear his gaze away, going back to look at the cars passing by in the busy streets with a different type of heaviness settling in.
-
“Hyung, do you think it’s true? What Jay-hyung said today. Do you think we really are made of stardust?”
Sunoo’s warm eyes glowed with hues of rich golden in the dark of the Ground dorm rooms.
“It might be. Do you think it’s true?”
Riki grimaced, unsure.
“I mean, it sounds silly. Jay-hyung tried to explain it using weird science words, but they were confusing and I didn't understand all of it.” He rushed the words out in a whisper. His Korean was still rough at best.
“All I got from it is that Jay-hyung is a big romantic, underneath that tough persona of his. And a big nerd.”
Sunoo snickered, amused.
“Jay-hyung is a softie, I knew it from the moment we first talked. He always looks out for the younger ones even if he thinks we don’t notice.”
Riki nodded in agreement, and Sunoo shuffled a bit closer in the cramped space of the bunk bed.
“Well then, do you believe him?”
Riki thought about it for a few moments.
“I think I’d like it if it was true. If I was made of stardust I would surely become everything I would want to be. I’d be strong enough to be out of here and in I-land in no time.”
Sunoo pondered over his words, and his eyes were like burning embers in the dark room.
“Well, I don’t know what we’re made of, but we’ll make it, Ni-ki. We’ll make it out of this place together and we’ll be in Iland with the other hyungs, okay?”
Riki swallowed the uncomfortable lump that was starting to form in his throat.
“Okay.”
-
“And now they won’t talk to each other. Like, at all.”
Jungwon made a frustrated sound, face dropping in his hands.
Riki genuinely felt bad for him. As the leader, he always had to deal with all the ugly parts of it, including maintaining the balance within the group. Something that had proved to be quite the task in the last few days.
The older hyungs were a proper mess. Riki had never fully understood their complicated dynamics and he, along with Jungwon and Sunoo, had been kept in the dark the whole time, since debut and even before that in I-land.
What he did know was 3 simple facts: Jay was in love with Heeseung, Heeseung was shit at dealing with feelings, and Jake and Sunghoon had been walking on eggshells around each other for a very long time.
And now, apparently, he also knew that something had happened, something that had caused the tension surrounding the four of them to snap abruptly (Riki had his suspicions about it being the new Sunghoon-Jay development, but he knew to keep his mouth shut). So now Heeseung and Jay weren’t talking.
That summed up was what had brought Jungwon to the current state of despair he was in.
They were on the couch, the three of them, Jungwon venting in the middle of him and Sunoo while both of them tried their best to console him.
Riki had his right arm draped around Jungwon’s shoulders, while Sunoo’s hand rested on his knee for comfort. His eyes found Sunoo’s in a split moment, and they shared a look of sympathy across Jungwon’s bent-forward figure.
Riki lowered his gaze to rest on his lap as if burned, not bearing to look at Sunoo for much longer.
The hyungs might have been all over the place, but Riki wasn’t that far off himself. It almost felt as if he was betraying Jungwon, one more problem to sort out added onto his shoulders.
Although there wasn’t really anything to sort out, he bitterly thought. Riki just bore the responsibility of his own messes. Scared shitless kids.
“Don’t torture yourself over it, Jungwon-ah,” Sunoo’s honeyed voice spoke softly.
“They’re big enough to figure it out by themselves, and they will. Let’s just give them some time, yeah? Trust them to be able to handle their own feelings.”
He looked at Riki for support, and Riki jolted, hurrying to speak.
“Y-Yeah, hyung,” he cleared his throat, voice coming out croaked, “don’t stress too much about it. I’m sure they’ll manage.”
He felt the tingling sensation of Sunoo’s eyes lingering on him for a second longer than he normally would, and the hand on his lap twitched, itching to touch. What, he didn’t know.
Jungwon heaved a sigh, finally rising to move his hands away from his face. He looked tired, probably more than any twenty-year-old should be.
“I hope you’re right. I really don’t want to involve myself.”
Riki brought his other arm along to loop around Jungwon’s form and pulled him into a sideways hug, while Sunoo squeezed his knee in support, smiling softly.
Jungwon relaxed in his hold, “I’m glad I can come to you two about it. This way I feel like I’m not alone, you know?”
Riki struggled to swallow, the knot in his throat getting tighter. “Anytime, hyung.”
-
Mood: Yours by Conan Gray.
Riki’s ears rang, static noise taking over as the only sound buzzing loudly in his cotton-filled brain.
He could see his hyungs reaching out to hug him in relief, congratulating him.
He could see the judges, and Bang PD, and Tomorrow x Together along with freaking BTS (he was still in a kind of shock about seeing J-hope up close) clapping and nodding along. They were applauding him. He could see Taki and Nicholas and Hanbin from where they were seated, along with the rest of the boys who hadn’t made it, proud and- was Nicholas teary-eyed?
He could see, but he couldn’t feel any of it. It felt like someone had disconnected him from himself the moment his name had been called. He was left breathless, not prepared.
He had been drowning, second after painful second, just moments ago, scared to death he wouldn’t make the cut, but now that he had been declared as one of the chosen members to debut he could feel nothing but reality spiraling away from his reach.
Then, warm brown eyes came into view. Riki floated back inside his body, and the emotion of the moment hit him like a fucking truck. There Sunoo stood, proud and happy, watching as Ni-ki got jostled from Jay’s arms to Heeseung’s, then to Jake’s. For a moment, he felt eternal. There Sunoo was.
Dread quickly washed over him as he realized Sunoo’s name had yet to be called, and he felt his mind clouding over.
As if he had read his mind, Sunoo turned away from the cameras for a split second and faced Riki. He winked in that mischievous way of his, and his lips mouthed a sole word.
“Stardust.” Sunoo’s name got called. Riki felt his chest tighten as Sunoo pulled him into a bone-crushing hug backstage, when the cameras were off, and whispered in his ear, “We are made of stardust, Ni-ki. You and me.”
-
Riki stared at the practice room ceiling, panting and trying to ease the burn in his lungs.
His vision was blurred and his limbs felt heavy, although it was a feeling he was well accustomed to. He had always been greedy, even when it came to practicing. He wouldn’t allow himself to accept anything that wasn’t as close to perfection as it could.
He couldn’t slip up.
Riki turned his head to his right,and like a magnet his eyes immediately found Sunoo’s form also lying on the cool ground of the practice room, eyes closed and chest heaving in fatigue.
Greedy. Greedy. Greedy.
He turned once more, swallowing down the bile that was threatening to come up his throat.
If they were three years younger, maybe Riki would have thrown himself on top of Sunoo mischievously, grinning in satisfaction after hearing the older complain about him being sweaty and gross.
If they were three years younger, maybe Sunoo would have played with Riki’s hair while they took a break from practice, carding his fingers through it in that slow motion that always made him sleepy and light-headed. If they were three years younger, maybe Riki would have blabbed non-stop to Sunoo about trivial things like one of Jay-hyung’s random facts or the sakura trees that grew outside his house, back in Okayama.
But Riki and Sunoo weren’t those kids anymore. They weren’t getting any younger. Riki hadn’t seen the sakura trees that grew outside of his house in years, because it had been years since he’d been able to go home to his family. His family was still in Okayama, in Japan, while he was stuck in Seoul. His Jay-hyung didn’t even bring up those random facts of his, these days. He was too busy avoiding being in the same room as Heeseung for more than necessary.
Riki watched the reflection in the mirror of the two of them from his spot on the floor, thoughtful. Maybe, when it came to his hyungs, he was still as naive as when he had first met them at fourteen, but in the many years he had known Heeseung and Jay, he had always perceived them as two halves of a whole. It wasn’t to say they didn’t exist without the other, no.
It was in the few stolen moments he had caught Jay being vulnerable to Heeseung, as he, too, sometimes needed to be someone’s dongsaeng. It was in the quiet way Jay took care of Heeseung, because being the oldest also meant being alone, sometimes. It was in the way Jay’s eyes lit up when Heeseung entered a room, in the way Heeseung looked at Jay like he held the moon and the stars in his palm when the other wasn’t looking back.
Sometimes, Ni-ki found himself feeling envious of what they had. The way they knew by heart the way the other moved, so that whenever they danced they were in unison even when it wasn’t on purpose. How in a room full of people, Heeseung’s eyes would always turn to find Jay’s first.
Riki thought, watching the two of them skirting around each other as they had been doing for the past few days (but, really, for much longer than that), that sometimes being older didn’t mean being wiser. Because if that were true, Heeseung and Jay would have no way to avoid knowing what they meant to each other.
As he thought so, he found himself looking at Sunoo once more, unsurprisingly.
-
“You like Sunoo hyung the most!”
“That’s not true!”
“I choose Ni-ki because I like Ni-ki.”
“Ni-ki, whose bed did you fall asleep on these days?”
“Yesterday it was Sunoo, the day before that it was Heeseung.”
“He came out at night and went to Sunoo.”
“I didn’t, why did you tell a lie?”
“But every morning I found him in my bed!”
“I think Sunoo is a teammate I couldn’t live without.”
“Whenever I look at Sunoo hyung I feel really happy.”
“I will also become a better hyung.”
“Sunki day? Is it the 24th today? I’ve forgotten about Sunki day for a long time now.”
“I’ll support you from afar.”
“Why support from afar? Come closer!”
-
Mood: watch by Billie Eilish.
Riki wandered through the dorm, still half asleep from the nap he had blissfully abandoned himself to. The dorm looked almost empty, no one in sight aside from Jungwon, who was still sleeping like the dead in his bed.
Stepping inside the living room, Riki quickly noted another person’s quiet presence, eyes immediately focusing on Sunoo’s sleeping figure sprawled out on the couch, the drama he was watching still running in the background.
Stealthily, he made his way through the room until he was standing right in front of the couch, and he paused to drink in the familiar sight of Sunoo asleep.
The soft light from the television danced on his face in a blur of colors in the dark room, and Riki’s blood burned in his veins. He looked around for a blanket to cover Sunoo with before retreating back into his bed, when suddenly a voice slightly louder than a whisper broke the thick silence that enveloped them.
“You only look when you think I’m sleeping.”
Riki jumped, shivers crawling on his skin. He snapped his head to meet Sunoo’s dark eyes, deep, bottomless pits staring right at him with an emotion Riki couldn’t quite define.
His throat had closed up, and he felt the palms of his hands getting clammy. He felt clueless, unprepared. What was he supposed to say?
“What are you saying? I always look at you,” he tried to retort, faking nonchalance.
His heart was drumming in his chest.
Sunoo frowned, and for a second Riki thought hurt flashed through his eyes.
“You never look. Not anymore. You only do when I can’t look back. So you can never see.”
Riki’s throat closed up, hands closed in a shaking fist. He took a deep, shuddering breath.
“What is there to see, hyung?”
Silence descended upon them for minutes that felt like hours. The clock in the kitchen ticked each second, every once in a while a drop of water fell in the sink with an echoing ‘plink’, the low humming of the ceiling fan filling the space between them left by everything unsaid.
Riki wanted so fiercely to be brave, he oh-so desired to turn around and bare himself to Sunoo. Show him every nook and creek of his bruised heart. So that Sunoo would look at him and know the truth. Of how he missed him, every day more than the one before. Of how sorry he was. Of how he had been kind of angry at Sunoo. Of how he had never been angry at him at all. Of how much he had wished— he wished—
But it didn’t matter anymore, did it?
“You ask what is there to see, but everyone sees except for you. Everyone knows. How pathetic does that make me?”
A bitter laugh escaped Sunoo, who got up from the couch and took a shaky step in Riki’s direction.
“I can't bear it anymore, Riki. It’s eating me alive.”
Sunoo’s eyes were fierce and shiny with unshed tears. He is beautiful. He took a deep breath, braving himself to keep talking.
“Now, you’ll listen to me. You’ll look. So that I can finally let you go, you owe me at least that. I can’t stand watching you avoid me like that’s going to make my feelings disappear.”
Riki’s chest stuttered, and his mouth opened in a gasp. He felt dazed, so confused. It can’t be. Sunoo must mean something else, he must have phrased it wrong.
“Hyung—” the word came out choked, and Riki felt like he'd been pushed underwater.
“No!” Sunoo stopped him, face painted in emotion.
“I have tried everything I can. I bore the burden of the mess I put myself in, and I bore it willingly because I figured being friends was better than being nothing at all. But now it feels like you won’t even give me that, and I can’t stand acting like nothing’s wrong between you and me knowing it’s tearing us apart.”
The words hit Riki like a slap in the face. It was unexpected and it burned, but it also made a blossom of hope bloom in his chest.
His head spun, and all he could clearly see was Sunoo, baring his heart to him in their living room.
Tears were now streaming down his face, leaving trails on his flushed cheeks. Once again, all Riki could think about was how beautiful he was.
“I understand that it’s easier for you to pretend you don’t notice–”
“Hyung—” Riki tried, feeling the knot in his throat tighten.
“—but I need you to see it now, because I can’t go on like this anymore—”
“Hyung, listen to me—”
“—so don’t stand there looking at me like I’ve turned crazy when you know how I feel about you. How I’ve felt about you ever since we first met-–”
“Hyung! I have been devoted to you and only you ever since I was fucking fourteen!”
Riki shouted at once, making Sunoo freeze, rendered motionless.
They both stared at each other, chests heaving. Riki finally felt the chains that had bounded him all this time slip away, and it felt like the first breath of air after breaching the surface of the water.
“I have been yours ever since I first saw you, ever since we first spoke in I-land.”
Sunoo had his eyes blown-wide, cheeks still stained with tears. He opened and closed his mouth, at a loss.
“But… it can’t be. It can’t— I don’t want pity, I’d rather face rejection but I can’t take your pity, Riki—”
Riki laughed, a bittersweet taste in his mouth.
“That’s not it, hyung. Can’t you see? You’re all I’ve ever wanted. Ever since I knew what wanting someone this way meant.”
Sunoo gasped, sucking in a shuddered breath.
“I don’t understand. I don’t—” he stumbled backwards, at a loss.
“Why— why didn’t you say anything? Why haven’t you said anything all this time?”
Riki felt his own eyes start to water.
“Because I never thought saying something was a possibility, hyung. Because I thought I’d lose you, and then…”
He closed his eyes and drew in a deep breath, searching for strength.
“And then I really lost you. And, well…what was the point of saying anything after that?”
Sunoo kept looking at him until he was done speaking, eyes frantically searching his gaze, as if trying to find the truth of Riki’s words in them.
“But you didn’t lose me.”
The words came out as a broken whisper.
In the silence and the dark of the room, both their hearts felt like they were beating out of their chests.
“You didn’t lose me,” Sunoo repeated once more, slower but louder this time, “I thought you didn’t want me near anymore because…well, because I thought you knew.
I thought you had figured it out with everything that had been going on with the fans and whatnot, and that you didn’t know how to reject me, so I let you be—”
“Reject you? You thought—”
Riki felt the ground going missing under his feet.
Could it have been? That it was all a misunderstanding? Had they simply been this stupid not to see what was right in front of them?
“Hyung, I thought you were disgusted by me. I thought you were angry at me. I didn’t— I thought I had messed it all up.”
Sunoo stepped closer, and took Riki’s wrists in his hands.
He was flushed from crying and his eyes were still teary, and he had never been more beautiful.
“I would never, ever, see you as anything but incredible, Riki.
I’ve been hurt so many times believing you didn’t want me like I wanted you. Believing you’d never want me like that—”
Riki shuddered, the skin where Sunoo touched tingling as if electricized.
“But I want you, hyung. I’m in love with you. I tried everything I could to get over you, but you’ve touched my heart and burned it. It’s been burning for you ever since.”
The rich brown of Sunoo’s eyes was the last thing Riki saw before Sunoo’s soft lips were pressed to his.
His heart soared in his chest, and it felt like everything clicked into place.
One of Sunoo’s hands came up to hold his face, and Riki melted in the kiss.
There, in the dark of the living room, Riki finally held Sunoo close. He thought that maybe, after all, all he had sacrificed had been worth it, if it meant he could keep holding Sunoo for a long time.