Ship/Member: jicheol
Tags: canonverse, post-disbandment, mentions of domestic violence (as a fact of life, but it doesn't happen to/between any of the main characters and is not explicitly described) and societal homophobia.
Permission to remix: Please ask

i'm physically incapable of writing anything else for 17hols besides jicheol i guess. this is... maybe less anger and hurt than you wanted but i hope this suffices. ao3 fic in comments if i repost later!

***

seungcheol is forty-one. he has a girlfriend (it seems too juvenile to call her that when she's thirty-six and they've been together for four years, but he doesn't have anything else to call her yet. the ring box he'd bought eight months ago sits in the cup of his first place 2006 daegu youth taekwondo tournament trophy in the little awards cabinet where he stores the accolades he's been allowed to keep. he's still waiting for the right time to take it out.) jiae is an attorney who works with women affected by abuse and domestic violence. the pay is garbage for the amount of work she puts in and the stress he sees under her eyes every night, but she takes pride in the work she does. he takes pride in knowing that he can take care of her at the end of the day.

she's a better person than he will ever be.

he says as much to jihoon, who just laughs, taking another drink from his bottle of cola.

they don't meet up very often - a far cry from seventeen codependency rumors! that used to follow them in their 20s - but seungcheol makes it a point to try to spend time with everyone one-on-one at least once a year. of course, he sees some of them more often: mingyu goes to the same gym as him, soonyoung likes to call him up to go drinking, and jeonghan likes to pop in at random intervals whenever he gets bored of hanging out with his cows. some of the others are a little harder to get ahold of, like chan and junhui, but they always text back.

and jihoon...

he sees jihoon once every few months, which is more often than he thought he would when they went on indefinite hiatus (which really means they're not getting back together to make music until their twenty-fifth anniversary or something.) even when they were actively promoting he and jihoon didn't spend all that much of their free time together. jihoon was often whisked away by soonyoung, being same-aged friends, and seungcheol found more emotional solace in jeonghan and wonwoo. there was a time early on when they were attached at the hip, bonds forged by fire that still couldn't be broken, but seungcheol tries not to think too much about the schism that formed between them shortly before debut and never truly went away.

in some ways, they're the closest - the only one i'd consider my real brother, jihoon had said once - but sometimes jihoon feels like he's a thousand miles away even when they're in the same room.

"you should propose to her already," jihoon grouses, poking at the remnants of his cup ramyun. "oppa, has seungcheol-oppa mentioned anything?" he pitches his voice up in a poor approximation of a feminine tone. "one of my friends got engaged last weekend, and i'm the last one left but we've been dating the longest!"

seungcheol pushes at jihoon's shoulder, rolling his eyes. "you know i have the ring. i just--"

"don't know when to do it, i know." jihoon rolls his eyes. "you think she doesn't know? just put us all out of our misery, hyung. what are you waiting for?"

seungcheol finishes off the rest of his beer instead of answering. he's never had a good answer for that question, and he's fielded it for ages.

he doesn't not want to marry her. every future he can possibly think of includes her by his side. maybe a kid or two - he's always liked them, and he has all the time in the world to be a house husband.

he loves her. 

she's a bit like jihoon, in some ways. extremely driven, bad with sudden change, not the greatest at starting a conversation but could talk for hours about whatever their primary passion is. they have the same twinkle in their eyes when they realize that the person they're talking to actually gives a shit about what they have to say.

maybe that's why they get along so well.

maybe there's the codependency. none of them would ever have felt truly comfortable dating someone that the rest of the members didn't like, and he doubts that any potential significant others would've wanted to stick around if they didn't like the rest of them. they've gone through it with almost everyone - first with a girlfriend of jeonghan's in their late 20s who didn't like that he kept talking about the rest of them all the time, with minghao's now-wife seven years ago, and most recently a girl seokmin started seeing a few months ago. seungcheol remembers looking to the others when he first brought jiae around after they'd been together for a year, remembers the weight off his chest when jihoon said i like her, hyung. i hope she sticks around. i think she's good for you.

seungcheol's met a couple of people that jihoon's been involved with over the years, but he's never introduced anyone to the group at large. seungcheol's never asked why, but soonyoung's lamented about it more than once.

hyung, don't you think jihoon is lonely? he's always been such a romantic, but why do you think he's never been able to find anyone? all he does is hide in his studio and make divorce music.

jihoon points at one of the green bottles on the table between them. "you got any glasses? pour me some."

seungcheol raises an eyebrow. "since when did you drink?"

"maybe i just feel like it."

seungcheol digs out a couple of shot glasses from the kitchen cabinet and pours jihoon a quarter-shot before he fills his own. they clink glasses and seungcheol downs his shot while jihoon scowls at his before tipping his head back. jihoon's face screws up from the taste; seungcheol chuckles as the younger sets the glass back down.

he's quiet for a bit, playing with the glass in his hands. seungcheol waits.

"seungcheol. you--i--we--remember all those years ago?"

seungcheol nods. how could he possibly forget his first love?

"sometimes i wonder about what could've happened if i didn't say stop."

jihoon doesn't look him in the eye, but seungcheol knows the face he's making well - lips pursed, little dimple in his cheek poking in. it hasn't changed much since they first met over two decades ago.

the words trigger a floodgate of feelings, moments, memories - all things that seungcheol had neatly packed up in a box and shoved into the back of his brain years ago. put aside, but never lost or forgotten.

they never could have been anything when they were young. it would've meant career suicide and made them social pariahs, and the power of young love was nothing in the face of everything else they'd been working so hard for. the feelings never truly went away, but seungcheol learned to compartmentalize, learned to appreciate the relationship that he and jihoon had for what it was.

he knew some of the other members were involved with each other to varying degrees, but he and jihoon never crossed that line, an unspoken agreement that it would take them somewhere they couldn't walk back from. it certainly wasn't for lack of desire - seungcheol lost count of the times his shapeless handjob fantasies suddenly morphed into having jihoon's fingers, his smile, his eyes. he wonders if that was the case for jihoon, too.

maybe ten years ago they might've tried something, when seventeen the group was on the decline and korea started becoming a little more accepting of gay relationships. maybe one of them should've said something when they no longer needed to worry so much about what other people might think. maybe one of them shouldn't have been so afraid of change. maybe then, they'd be having a different conversation instead of the one they're having now.

if this were a movie, seungcheol thinks, this would probably be the part where he captures jihoon's lips in a passionate kiss and they ride off into the sunset, consequences be damned. but this is real life and their lives are what they are, as much as he might want to think about the what ifs.

"jihoonie," seungcheol says, reaching out to cover jihoon's hand with his own atop the table and ignoring the way his voice is a little too thick. "thank you for trusting me."

jihoon's lips quirk up a little at the corners, but there's something still so distant in his eyes. "you don't need to be so sappy with me. i've had a long time to get over it."

are you over it? seungcheol wants to ask. i don't know if i was ever truly over you.

"i'll still sing at your wedding, though. i promised jiae i would. she's giving me free reign to choose the song, y'know?"

"promised? why are you making plans for my wedding without me?" seungcheol whines. jihoon's taking this a little too well, but he doesn't want to--can't pry now, not when he's certain jihoon just wants to move on from this tonight.

"i keep telling you, she's five steps ahead of you. she's way too good for you, hyung."

he's right, of course. "well, if there's anyone who's going to sing at my wedding, i would definitely want it to be you, jihoonie."

"don't tell seungkwan. he'd be devastated."

he sees jihoon off to his taxi, promising that he'll pop the question soon as he hugs jihoon tight.

if it were seokmin, they'd throw out casual i love yous before departing. since it's jihoon, he just smiles and watches the black cab leave before heading back inside.

he takes the ring box out from the cabinet, opening it up just to check that the ring is still in there. it's simple, five small diamonds in a row like she'd shown him, but it sparkles in the dim light nonetheless.

seungcheol snaps the box closed and hides it in his underwear drawer before heading to the bathroom to brush his teeth.

he'll do it this weekend.

seungcheol doesn't know when he fell in love with jihoon, but he distinctly remembers the day jihoon broke his heart.

it started and ended with a kiss. he and jihoon kissed - well, more than once, and there's grainy video to prove it (i'm taking jihoonie's first kiss!) - but they kissed once behind closed doors and it meant something.

they were sixteen and seventeen and to this day seungcheol has no idea how they ended up like this, but jihoon was sitting in his lap and seungcheol had his hands on jihoon's waist and it was objectively an awful kiss, no finesse and misaligned but it was seungcheol's first kiss with someone he thought he might actually love, and that made everything seem perfect.

until jihoon jerked his head back, cheeks red and chest heaving. "we can't--we shouldn't," he stammered, hands curling into fists over seungcheol's t-shirt. "hyung, i--sorry, i--"

"you're right," seungcheol said, ignoring the way his chest twisted up tight alongside the cotton jersey. "even if we're not... like that, hyung will always be here for you. you know that, right?"

"yeah," jihoon replied, a soft exhale as he rested his forehead against seungcheol's shoulder. seungcheol swore he could hear jihoon's heartbeat, too fast but just the same as his own. "me too. always."