Ship/Member: verkwan
Major Tags: societal homophobia
Additional Tags: canon divergent
Permission to remix: Yes

***

Vernon stops laughing once he realizes he's the only one doing so. His voice is too loud and echoes through the quiet. On the way into the building, thick dew had clung to the blades of artificial grass lining the planters out front, and he can't help but think of it as his hands start to sweat. "Wait," he says, the penny in his mind always dropping too slowly for this fucking industry, "are you serious?"

"It's a smart idea," says someone from his own team.

"Is it?"

"He's already agreed," another staff member informs him, "so we just need you to sign and we can proceed with the first marketing meeting," and before Vernon can say anything else he's being handed a manila envelope with a contract inside. Standard collab stuff, tentative deadlines and how the company plans to profit-split. How much of that will go to the artists themselves, and it’s never much. Vernon flips through it with a strange sense of calm.

Sure enough, on the bottom of the last page, the other signature is already there.

*

can't believe this shit he messages on the way out. they treat me like a kid

ouch comes the response. so it's happening

yeah and it's gonna be so awkward, idk how i'm gonna survive it. he invited me to his place for dinner tomorrow to 'talk away from cameras'. i just don't want to fight again.

Minghao sends back a link to a meditation retreat he's thinking of attending. Vernon locates enough inner peace not to block him outright for that, and no more.

*

Seungkwan's new apartment glitters the same way in person as it did in the pages of the magazine Vernon guiltily bought at the convenience store the week it came out. White counters, steel appliances, marble in all directions. It's almost astonishingly soulless considering its inhabitant, but Vernon has been informed by reliable sources (Minghao) that it takes a lot of money to make something look this cold, and if Seungkwan was anything when Vernon last saw him it was determined to prove himself.

"Welcome," he's saying, fluttering near the door. He's had lip fillers done recently. Vernon wrenches his gaze away from Seungkwan's mouth and decides to chill the fuck out.

"Thanks. Cool place."

Seungkwan's smile brightens. "Oh, thank you. It's nothing, really. I'm barely here. Do you want a drink? Should we order food?"

“I’d take a beer.”

“Ah.”

“No beer?”

“I have wine,” Seungkwan says. “And seltzer. Mostly seltzer.”

“That’s fine.”

“We can order beer with the food.”

“Seungkwan-ah,” Vernon says, too familiar just to watch Seungkwan’s cheeks pink. “It’s fine. Relax.”

Seungkwan doesn’t, but then Vernon hadn’t expected him to. They settle into the rhythm of food delivery, passing Seungkwan’s phone back and forth and commenting on which plates go well together and how many of each they should get. The familiarity bleeds the rest of the unwelcome anxiety from Vernon’s shoulders, and he lets himself relax into the moment. They’ve done this together a dozen times before. Two dozen, three.

Seungkwan offers industry gossip like an olive branch while they wait for the food. Vernon doesn’t know most of these people, nor does he particulary care to, but he listens anyway. Seungkwan’s pretty fingers illustrate his points. His eyebrows raise high on his forehead when he’s telling a particularly shocking part of a story.

The patter lasts through dinner, too — and through the beer Seungkwan added to the order when Vernon wasn’t looking. Vernon almost thinks they won’t talk about it all.

And then Seungkwan gets up, bags the trash to put by the door, and whirls around on his heel. “So you’re featuring on my next title track.”

“Yeah,” Vernon says.

“And— they told you I’m writing it? Because it’s not quite done but I have a lot of lyrics. Or, ideas. I have a lot of scraps of things. Jihoon-hyung is helping.”

“That’s cool of him.”

“Yeah. Do you— did you want to see? So you can start working on your verse? Or maybe we should talk about what image we want to present during our appearances. It’s just a few schedules, but still. Oh, but we don’t have to get into that right now. Let’s talk about music, that’s easier.”

“Right,” Vernon says. “Either way is fine.”

Seungkwan grimaces. “Sorry.” He gestures to himself, rueful, self-effacing. “I haven’t changed much. Obviously.”

Don’t talk about yourself like that, Vernon almost snaps. The impulse burns in his throat.

“It’s cool,” he says again, and hears how dull it sounds, the way he’s giving Seungkwan nothing and letting him do all the work. “I do want to see what you’ve got,” he tries. “I can even sketch a couple things out while I’m here if you don’t mind me staying a little longer.”

“That’s perfect.”

Seungkwan barrels down the hallway. Vernon hears a door opening and closing, papers shuffling, a muffled curse, and then Seungkwan is returning clutching a journal and a stack of loose notes in his hands.

It’s transporting. Vernon blinks and he’s three years younger, jaw tight on the bed he and Seungkwan share asking how bad is it? and Seungkwan can’t even answer. His hands are shaking as he scrolls through one feed and then another, each of them with pictures of SEVENTEEN’s Vernon fierce onstage intermingled with stories of a bad attitude, negative fan interactions, the sideways coloration of suspected queerness following him from the place he was born in but has no allegiance to. Each thing alone would pass on with barely a ripple. Together, alongside a credible rumor that he has “a serious boyfriend who may also be in the entertainment industry”, it’s a riptide. Fans are burning photocards. Reaction videos are being made of other reactors who are reacting to other reactions, the snake eating its own tail, the eventual awful downswing of fame like this. The HYBE building will be aflame with funeral wreaths by tomorrow morning if it hasn’t happened already.

people will get over it, Seungkwan tries to tell him in the memory, but it isn’t true. And it comes for him next, though he isn’t hit with the same wave of shock and dismay.

Vernon releases hip-hop music on Soundcloud and sells out standing room only shows. Seungkwan leaves the group, too, and has success as an OST mainstay and semi-permanent host on a variety show. And years pass, and they don’t talk, and then Seungkwan has to go and arrange this.

Vernon yanks himself back into the moment. “Why,” he hears himself ask, and he registers how angry he is only when it’s too late to take it back, “would you agree to this shit? Things have been going so well for you. Do you feel sorry for me, is that what it is?”

Seungkwan’s mouth drops into a soft ‘o’ of surprise. “Sorry?”

“It was fine. We were fine. And now we’re doing this, but why?”

“Hansol-ah—“

“No one calls me that anymore,” Vernon says. His chest is hot. “I know some fans miss us. I know it wasn’t all bad. I know. I miss it too. But god.”

Seungkwan’s eyes brim over with tears, and one tracks crystalline down over the high cut of his cheekbone. “You don’t answer my messages. You don’t answer my calls. Are we supposed to just never see each other again? I don’t accept that.”

“So you corner me into a collaboration that could blow up both of our careers? Again?”

“I don’t know!” Seungkwan bursts forth, and oh, here, this is what Vernon had been pulling for without realizing. Seungkwan real and raw in front of him. Seungkwan standing up for himself. Proof that the thing between them was and is as explosive as it’s always felt.

Vernon loved Seungkwan the way he loves a mic in his hand — not only for what he represents, but also for the person Vernon becomes when he surrenders the gravity of that love. It’s stupid to pretend that feeling isn’t coming back. Love, thrill, misery. The rise and fall. A kaleidoscope of emotion condensing everything they’ve ever meant to each other into that single tear down Seungkwan’s face, and the dot it creates on the floor.

“Why did you agree?” Seungkwan asks him. “You didn’t have to. I thought you wanted to see me too.”

“We shouldn’t,” Vernon replies, which is not i don’t.

“Well, we’re here. What do you want to do?”

What does Vernon want to do? Here, in Seungkwan’s apartment, no cameras, no microphones, no expectations aside from the ones they’re putting on each other, he’s adrift.

He reaches his hand out. “Show me what you have so far.”

“You’ll judge based off of the lyrics? Chwe Vernon, you’re just the same.”

How awful, the way Seungkwan doesn’t seem to think either of them has changed. How comforting, and how wonderful, and what a goddamn disappointment.

*

how’d it go?

fine, i guess

ah. so you’re heartbroken again.

This contact can no longer send or receive messages from you.