Ship/Member: wongyuhan! Major Tags: past relationships Additional Tags: failed polyam, mild angst, ambiguous/open ending Permission to remix: Please ask
***
"Oh, and by the way," Wonwoo adds right before he hangs up, like it isn't the whole reason he called instead of texting. "Kim Mingyu is getting married."
Jeonghan's fingers tense on an ugly cord. The sound is a long way away; he looks down at his hands and makes them stop. The quiet leaves room for blood to beat loudly in his ears.
"When?" he says, and then remembers himself. "That's nice. Good for him."
"It is nice," Wonwoo says. "Hyung, I have to go. Let's talk later." Then, wry: "Don't get drunk without me."
"Aigoo, look at our Wonu always working so hard~" Jeonghan coos, but his voice sounds strange, even to him. "Go antagonize your kids. I'll see you when I see you."
These days Jeonghan is a songwriter. Not as good as Jihoon, but still pretty good. The proof is in his KOMCA page: half a dozen pop hits certified gold, several drama OSTs, and now a big-budget wartime musical called Navy Days. The producers had pitched it as Bye Bye Birdie but with real boats onstage, and also they would like if none of the story made sense when performed by ugly people, thanks. (Jeonghan obliged.)
Most of his work is about love or death, which by now is a kind of bromide. There are two types of people, two types of preoccupations (sex and whatever academics like better than it). And, he supposes, two types of music: the beginning and the end of things.
The middle is the hard part. That's where Jeonghan makes his money.
Their money. Wonwoo earns a decent salary from tenure, but it's Jeonghan's songs that bought their apartment and cars and the house in the mountains where they try to spend summers. Neither of them keep score, but Jeonghan's parents are canny in how they inquire after their finances.
Oh, is Wonwoo still teaching? they'll say. At the university or at hagwon? Full-time? What a dear.
The point is: they're solid, but they've worked for it. You can't just let life run its course. Nothing worth having comes without a fight.
Jeonghan knows that. Wonwoo knows that.
Mingyu had been a little shakier on the concept. That's why, Jeonghan thinks, there was always that great divide between them. Mingyu, with his golden skin and the charming way he used to lisp Jeonghan's name, believed in eternal summers. Lived in a sleepy town where everyone was young and beautiful and the sun set on the same brilliant, saturated day, forever.
Jeonghan lives in the real world, and Wonwoo lives there with him.
That's why they never would have worked.
I wish we never met him, Wonwoo said once, his tears staining the fabric at Jeonghan's shoulder. They were drinking then too, the only time he could be honest about any of it. He's the worst thing that ever happened to us.
It's both the truth and not.
That's fair, Jeonghan had replied, tired down to his bones. He'd never thought himself the kind of person who could love more than once, and certainly not at a time. But he had with Wonwoo, with Mingyu. And now look at him.
The problem with stepping, even for a moment, outside the real world, is that coming back to earth shattered your bones on first impact. When they pieced themselves together, limbs and nails and gristle, they found they were no longer whole—there were discrete spaces where Mingyu's wheezing laugh and reckless optimism should have been. The spaces he'd filled with secrets, the spaces he'd warmed with his skin, now gaping wounds.
That's fair. Bet he says the same thing about you. In this song of theirs, Jeonghan is the beginning, and Wonwoo is the end. Kim Mingyu was the heaving, cresting middle, the crescendo— and now he's gone. Probably driving around that fanciful food truck he'd always wanted. Getting married to some nameless pretty face they'll both pretend they aren't going to stalk online.
Jeonghan hopes he thinks of them sometimes, and that it keeps him up at night.
[FILL] it's all good till the crescendo
Major Tags: past relationships
Additional Tags: failed polyam, mild angst, ambiguous/open ending
Permission to remix: Please ask
***
"Oh, and by the way," Wonwoo adds right before he hangs up, like it isn't the whole reason he called instead of texting. "Kim Mingyu is getting married."
Jeonghan's fingers tense on an ugly cord. The sound is a long way away; he looks down at his hands and makes them stop. The quiet leaves room for blood to beat loudly in his ears.
"When?" he says, and then remembers himself. "That's nice. Good for him."
"It is nice," Wonwoo says. "Hyung, I have to go. Let's talk later." Then, wry: "Don't get drunk without me."
"Aigoo, look at our Wonu always working so hard~" Jeonghan coos, but his voice sounds strange, even to him. "Go antagonize your kids. I'll see you when I see you."
These days Jeonghan is a songwriter. Not as good as Jihoon, but still pretty good. The proof is in his KOMCA page: half a dozen pop hits certified gold, several drama OSTs, and now a big-budget wartime musical called Navy Days. The producers had pitched it as Bye Bye Birdie but with real boats onstage, and also they would like if none of the story made sense when performed by ugly people, thanks. (Jeonghan obliged.)
Most of his work is about love or death, which by now is a kind of bromide. There are two types of people, two types of preoccupations (sex and whatever academics like better than it). And, he supposes, two types of music: the beginning and the end of things.
The middle is the hard part. That's where Jeonghan makes his money.
Their money. Wonwoo earns a decent salary from tenure, but it's Jeonghan's songs that bought their apartment and cars and the house in the mountains where they try to spend summers. Neither of them keep score, but Jeonghan's parents are canny in how they inquire after their finances.
Oh, is Wonwoo still teaching? they'll say. At the university or at hagwon? Full-time? What a dear.
The point is: they're solid, but they've worked for it. You can't just let life run its course. Nothing worth having comes without a fight.
Jeonghan knows that. Wonwoo knows that.
Mingyu had been a little shakier on the concept. That's why, Jeonghan thinks, there was always that great divide between them. Mingyu, with his golden skin and the charming way he used to lisp Jeonghan's name, believed in eternal summers. Lived in a sleepy town where everyone was young and beautiful and the sun set on the same brilliant, saturated day, forever.
Jeonghan lives in the real world, and Wonwoo lives there with him.
That's why they never would have worked.
I wish we never met him, Wonwoo said once, his tears staining the fabric at Jeonghan's shoulder. They were drinking then too, the only time he could be honest about any of it. He's the worst thing that ever happened to us.
It's both the truth and not.
That's fair, Jeonghan had replied, tired down to his bones. He'd never thought himself the kind of person who could love more than once, and certainly not at a time. But he had with Wonwoo, with Mingyu. And now look at him.
The problem with stepping, even for a moment, outside the real world, is that coming back to earth shattered your bones on first impact. When they pieced themselves together, limbs and nails and gristle, they found they were no longer whole—there were discrete spaces where Mingyu's wheezing laugh and reckless optimism should have been. The spaces he'd filled with secrets, the spaces he'd warmed with his skin, now gaping wounds.
That's fair. Bet he says the same thing about you.
In this song of theirs, Jeonghan is the beginning, and Wonwoo is the end. Kim Mingyu was the heaving, cresting middle, the crescendo— and now he's gone. Probably driving around that fanciful food truck he'd always wanted. Getting married to some nameless pretty face they'll both pretend they aren't going to stalk online.
Jeonghan hopes he thinks of them sometimes, and that it keeps him up at night.