Work Text:
bangchan watches hongjoong’s fingers tapping the keyboard as a new beat is formed. he is ateez’s captain. producer. another rapper. friend. he’s a friend that has dark circles under his eyes, damaged blonde hair and a curve to his shoulders that points to another word bitter in both of their mouths: leader.
bangchan watches while he leans on his reclining chair, with large shoulders set down as if he’s trying to shrink into his own skin, as if he doesn’t belong in the tiny studio of an agency on the floor above a convenience store, where you can sense the smells of food heated in the microwave and of the sewer under the sidewalks if you really pay attention. he watches as if he could be consumed by the colorful lights hanging on the wall with transparent tape, and by the 2000s emo band posters that none of them had the chance to see live in all of their teenage fury glory, because they were too worried about pursuing a career.
bangchan is out of his professional and neutral environment. where he feels comfortable in his black clothes and his double entendre jokes that he tells with an innocent smile, just to have any feeling cutting through his body that isn’t the need to mass produce. to put seven other people on the path of their dreams, on their golden paths with red ruby shoes. he feels as if the miniature flags on hongjoong’s small desk are telling truths about himself that bangchan can’t ever gather the courage to admit. all of those hidden abbreviations in leather pants and combat boots in a group that clearly has all of the colors printed in their blood allels.
hongjoong has short blonde hair for this comeback. with small black spots, reproducing the fur of a skittish and wild animal. but, in the low light of the night, he is anything but skittish. maybe wild. in his custom spiked clothes and his ear piercings that catch the ambience change in a blinding glow. wild. not skittish, because to be skittish hongjoong would have to be in his stage makeup, and his long coats that drag along his thin legs until the hem reaches the buckles of his leather boots. to be skittish he should have kicked bangchan out the moment the oldest ran inside his studio, saying he needed help in a song that would be rival to his group’s song.
to be skittish, ateez’s leader and captain should be more worried about the competition. but he wasn’t. where bangchan was all plans and concepts, hongjoong just tried to go through it with what was left of his whole team. or well, partially whole.
they don’t talk about mingi and hyunjin. it’s a subject they’ve forbidden themselves of talking about, because they know they’re not ready. they’re not ready to talk about it as human beings, as friends of the people who were sent away due to mental health, and due to malicious rumors. they don’t talk about it as leaders, because in their bones, they feel that they failed, that they put both boys in that situation. they were the ones who handpicked the two boys who now turn into dust of their actions.
there is something in being a leader and in the late nights that only hongjoong can understand, according to bangchan. there is something in the late night with computer lights hurting both of their eyes. there is something in hongjoong that bangchan can’t let go, because he feels like his lifebuoy. it’s more weight than the small leader can deal with, but bangchan allows himself to be selfish when he presses his fingers on the left thigh of the boy next to him and lets his heart break a little more.
hongjoong is younger than him. more tired too. more talented. even though he won’t acknowledge it. bangchan believes he’d be perfect in any activity in the arts that he puts himself into. he could be a great stylist. he could be a painter. hongjoong will probably write a book as soon as his idol days are over. he will be grand in everything he touches. as midas turning everything into gold. bangchan doesn’t think the same of himself because if he isn’t a musician he’s simply nothing.
he can’t cook to keep himself alive. he can’t sow a button that fell off his shirt without poking his fingers on the needles that he would take years to thread. he can’t be what he isn’t. and bangchan is a musician.
hongjoong looks paler than he actually is on the computer light and each time he looks at bangchan, it makes the older want to do what he does with all outcast children: give haven.
he wants to build a beach house and put hongjoong inside. wants to give the leader a rest week. and watch as the sunlight hits his bleached hair. his pale skin and lets his cheeks take in a reddish tone that will be almost too captivating for bangchan not to press with his lips.
he wants. he wants. he wants.
but he can’t have. not in this life. not when they’re sitting on their chairs and waiting for the perfect beat to fit in a song that they should compose together. he wants to be true with hongjoong. he wants to say that the leader can lean on him. he wants to say he takes more of hongjoong than what he knows he’s giving. he wants to kiss the fingertips. wants to paint their nails together. wants to make their dreams walk together.. their children, as the media calls them, to be friends without the weight of being rivals.
he wants many things in this life.
and by order of priorities, he must let hongjoong go.
“is everything okay?” bangchan hears hongjoong ask with a cracked voice. the song’s beat has stopped and there’s nothing besides the late night silence around them. “you’ve been silent for hours.”
“just thinking.” just tired.
he smiles a smile that doesn’t reach his eyes and watches as hongjoong stretches on the chair, as if he were a feline.
leopard.
he wants to pat the exposed skin of his stomach. he wants to trace his fingers over the pattern of the tattoo he keeps hidden from the public. he wants to put his mouth where only the sun has reached.
he wants too much. that’s bangchan’s great problem.
and in the tiring and silent night, he wants hongjoong. but he also wants a grammy. also wants a world tour. wants felix to eat properly. wants hyunjin back.
he wants to cry at the immensity of the feelings that fit in that small studio when a small boy smiles at him with his perfect and aligned fingers and his tired eyes.
“just thinking.” he repeats.
about you.
he never completes the sentence.