#(maybe the Hanruki sex scene was the friends we made along the way?)

[intoloopin]

A CHAPTER: THE SHARP AND THE BLUNT (PART 2/2).

tws: dubious consent (Haruki is still very weird and forward about initiating sex! and sometimes that gets Toxic). alcohol abuse and alcoholism. semi-smut (the driest, most unsexy and robotic blowjob in the world is given). insinuation and one very direct discussion of sexual trauma, abuse by a past partner, abuse of workplace power and stalking. a little hint of body dysmorphia (Hanjae's inner voice is often not very kind about how he looks). internalized homophobia, and a hint of biphobia in between the lines. queer pessimism (it gets a bit Hurtful). as always: if I missed anything, please tell me. starring: Lee Hanjae. Fukunaga Haruki. featuring: Dylan Hwang / Hwang Chihoon. their fellow LOOPiN members (old OT10, no Gyujin, still stuck with a bit of Beomseok). Uhm Junghwa (new manager extraordinarie). the ghost of Choi Sangwon. a brief mention of Night Child / NTCD. timeline: early to the end of mid 2022 | quick flash forward to september 2023 (additional context under the cut). word count: 14,138 words. author's note: lil delay because life has to be life, sometimes, and because the hotel scene from May 26th was way more challenging to get right in tone than i originally expected (it's one of the ones to watch out for), but here we are!!!! the Hanruki end. things get much more heavy, morally grey and blantly sad in this final part, so really, mind the tags, skip if you must. and: music rec moment two. stay safe out there, everyone!

March 13th, 2022.

Hanjae doesn’t shower, or change clothes, or gets to sleep on the couch. He lays on it and spends the whole night awake, on his phone, and on his Nintendo Switch after that, back on his phone. He catches the sun rising through the window’s curtain and maybe he sleeps, briefly.

Was it even real?, he wonders when he finds himself with his eyes wide and restless, staring up at the ceiling; Did it even happen?

He pokes and pokes at the one painful spot over his shoulder, the marking of Haruki’s teeth, and gets consumed by shame at the confirmation that yes, it was real; yes, it did happen.

When Junghwa steps into their apartment to wake everyone up in the morning, Hanjae’s sitting on the couch, breathing into his hands. He still looks like a mess. Hair, clothes, face – a mess.

She gives him a crumbling look, half pity, half exhaustion, and laughs humorless. “Out of everyone, I didn’t expect you to misbehave, Lee Hanjae.”

Hanjae peeks up at her through his clammy fingers. He feels a genuine and terrifying urge to throw up on her shoes and buy her new ones immediately after.

“12 AM to 8 PM for you,” Junghwa tells him, with a sigh. She walks more into the house, close enough to lay a merciful hand on the crown of his head – pat, pat, pat. “Just this one time.”

Haruki hours, he thinks, dazed, because that’s what everyone calls it, because he’s the one stuck with the alternative schedule the most: fails to wake up for practice often, gets shoved at the company until late at night. He’ll probably get the same sentence today. He and Hanjae might have to train alone, together, for hours. His stomach takes another queasy turn.

Hanjae watches the world move around him, for once out of the routine; after hearing his fate, Taesong takes a minute out of washing his face to force Hanjae to gulp down ibuprofen while Haegon shoves a pillow at him. Junghwa goes upstairs to knock on Haruki’s door, phone against her ear as she calls him, and then comes down in record speed, by herself.

She asks everyone, “Shall we go?”

“Can I get Haruki hours, please?” Seungsoo begs from where he’s resting his head against the wall, eyes closed, sipping Gatorade.

Junghwa doesn’t look at him as she firmly says, “No.”

“But I’m dying,” Seungsoo whines. “I’m fucking dying. I can’t work. I’m gonna drop dead, dead.”

Minwoo shoves him angrily out of the way to open the front door, tells him, “Then drop dead, Seungsoo. Drop dead.”

It takes a while for the house to fall back into quiet, after everyone’s gone. Hanjae swears he hears the sound of everything amplified now, gonging inside his head. Maybe it’s the hangover – it’s probably the hangover, but he hasn’t had enough of those to figure all of their symptoms out.

He sleeps again, a miracle, wakes up again, and there’s the faint smell of something being stir fried coming from the kitchen, slowly drowning the whole room.

“I’m making tofu,” Haruki says when Hanjae sits up to check. He’s a slouched thing behind the stove, yet he’s flashing him a grin. “You want some?”

He looks, from a distant inspection – normal, regular, like Haruki always does in the morning: a little wan, with his voice a little deep. They’ve kissed, they’ve made out, and he’s absolutely normal, proposing to make Hanjae breakfast-lunch.

Hanjae says a meek ‘yes’ to tofu, and Haruki tells him, “Five minutes.”

It’s enough time for Hanjae to go brush his teeth, and hyperventilate in privacy: every corner of their bathroom makes him think back to Sunyoung’s, and to being on the floor– being kissed on the floor– being kissed by Haruki on the floor until he wasn’t.

He goes back to the couch, a stiff walk. Haruki comes to sit with him, holding a single bowl of food with two runny eggs on top, and Hanjae jumps back up and three feet away. He bumps his heel bone on the coffee table, and the pain is a shock up his entire leg; serves him well, serves him right.

“I want to apologize for yesterday or earlier today at night,” Hanjae says in a single breath, his voice coming out rough around the edges. His arms are set like wood on his sides, tight, fisted.

In front of him, Haruki’s face goes through a journey: startled, then confused, then amused, smiling. He takes a big bite of food. “Oh, you mean the bathroom? That’s what you mean?” He asks, covering his chewing mouth with a hand, and Hanjae nods once. “Pfff, no need. It’s not your fault a girl had to pee.”

“That’s not what I meant, not, not what I’m apologizing for.”

“So what are you apologizing for?” Haruki asks him, tilting his head, dark hair falling like a cloak over his eyes. He wrinkles his nose. “Didn’t I kiss you? I’m sure I kissed you. I’m sure you kissed me back.”

“Hyung,” Hanjae says, helplessly, and has to turn his face to the side, closing his eyes briefly. “Still, everything– We were drunk, and everything, it wasn’t… appropriate. To happen.”

Haruki has stopped chewing when Hanjae looks back at him, has gone full body still for a moment. When he gulps the food down, it looks like it’s a painful thing for him to do.

“Appropriate,” he repeats, looking down at his own feet, like it’s an odd word, an annoying one. “Just sit down, Hanjae. Sit back down. We’re not done yet.”

“We’re not… What?”

Haruki abandons the bowl and chopsticks, puts them roughly on the table, then motions to the vague spot on his side – come here. Hanjae doesn’t move. He still has some word stuck under his tongue he has to work out.

Haruki doesn’t take his paralyzes at all. He clicks his tongue, walks up and close and puts both hands on Hanjae’s shoulders, maneuvers him and sits him back down not that gently on the couch. He tucks himself close to him, sideways, a bent knee almost on his lap, and stays there.

He eyes Hanjae openly then, a brand new thing. Haruki’s seen him, could have gotten sick of seeing him with how much it happens every day, but now Hanjae knows with certainty that he’s never been evaluated by him, or taken into this much consideration up until this very moment.

He hooks Hanjae’s ear lobe between two fingers and pulls, taps at the hoop earring. “I thought you would be a bad kisser,” Haruki says. “But you’re not.”

Granted, Hanjae wouldn’t call their kiss a good kiss. Both their mouths tasted bitter, he remembers now, and their teeth clunked against each other like two cogs being put in an unfit machine. It happened so quick– everything, so quick.

“Thanks,” he says nonetheless, and again, “Thank– Thank you.”

Haruki laughs at him, wispy, a single ‘ha’, and the air around them grows more tense. Haruki pushes himself close until he's full on Hanjae’s lap, a similar position to some hours ago. Hanjae turns his face a little away, to the side; sets his eyes on a wall, right where a painting Haegon made when he was eight years old hangs, framed. 

The cushion of the living room couch smells like an amalgamation of all of them, he notices. There’s a stain on it where Chihoon had once spilled fancy carbonara – a meal everyone saved the whole month to have on their third debut anniversary. Seungsoo had offered him three bucks to lick it clean. The video of Dylan concluding the bet is a blurry 1 minute thing O.z had recorded, still somewhere far down Hanjae’s gallery.

“Hanjae,” Haruki says now, and taps at his nose. “You’re too tense. You’re zooming out. Get out of your head.”

“It’s just–” Hanjae mutters, and can’t stop – just can’t stop: “Here? Wouldn’t it be bad? If someone walks in, if they forgot something and want to come back, and I heard, I think I heard that, isn’t there a camera here, a camera Seo CEO looks through–”

“There’s no camera. Not a single one anywhere. I would know,” Haruki looks right into his eyes to reassure him, or tries to; Hanjae can’t sustain it much. His hands are a constant goosebump on their trail on the back of Hanjae’s neck, up and up and suddenly down, up again. “Do you want to take this to your room?”

But it’s not Hanjae’s room, singular. It’s impossible to look anywhere and not see one of Seungsoo’s too colorful caps, or Minwoo’s notes, scrambled and frantic, the only indication he’s yet to fully move into the studio.

This is LOOPiN’s home, collective. They’re coworkers sharing space at their core, and it’s– It’s all just–

Hanjae makes a whimpering sound, involuntary, not an answer to anything, and with that Haruki’s off him, a sudden rise up and turn around. He walks away with a loud sigh and Hanjae thinks, disappointment and relief an ocean in his stomach, It’s done. It’s over.

It’s not; Haruki just goes to open the fridge’s door, takes something out, pours it somewhere, comes back to the couch with it. He stands it for Hanjae to take – a red plastic cup filled to the brim with some leftover wine.

“One complaint,” Haruki tells him, and goes back to where he was; a stable weight on Hanjae’s lap, both arms hooked around his neck. “One sip.”

“It’s– It’s morning, hyung.”

“No. No ‘hyung’. Stop that,” he says, and Hanjae can’t figure out, either by hearing it or looking him in the face, if Haruki’s being serious or not. He’s still smiling. “I don’t like it.”

“So what,” Hanjae asks, and sinks deeper into the couch when Haruki makes to push himself closer, “Do you like, then? About me if, or this, or–”

It’s all he can get out before Haruki puts a hand over his mouth, firm.

“I’ll blow you,” he says bluntly, and puts his hand away. Another paper thin smile. “Will that shut you up?”

Around a gulp, Hanjae nods, manages to let out a shaky, “Ok–ay.”

Permission granted, it takes a moment for anything to even happen. Haruki grabs the cup out of Hanjae’s hand quickly and downs it, almost fully drains it. He takes a deep and loud breath when he gives it back, eyes closed through it, before he begins to go down on him.

When Haruki kneels in between his legs, Hanjae tries to put a hand on top of his head, a timid and gentle fondling, but Haruki bats it away, says, “Just stay still.”

And Hanjae stays still. He looks up at the ceiling – eggshell white, the same as all the walls, with the faint darkening in a corner where there once was a leak. The kitchen sink hasn’t been closed all the way, and he can hear the drip, drip, drip of the water falling on dirty tableware under the sound of his loose belt being unbuckled, his zipper working open, the downing of his jeans.

What a waste, he thinks, over and over, tells himself that’s all he must think now; what a grandiose waste.

The blowjob’s a not so quick, but fully methodic thing. Hanjae taps Haruki on the shoulder when he’s finally near coming, says so around a pant. And then comes, Haruki swallows, that’s it – that’s the full scope of it, Hanjae has decided. Privately, he calls it efficient instead of emotionless, or confusing, or unsettling.

He zips himself back up as Haruki wipes his mouth and goes to collect the pot, the chopsticks. Hanjae catches him by the wrist before he slips away, asks, “You?”

Haruki laughs – Hanjae’s never seen him laugh so much so quickly, or in such a high pitch. He says, leaning forward, “Me? Me what? What are you even going to do? You look like you’re about to have a panic attack, Hanjae.”

Hanjae’s grip on him goes loose. Haruki breaks free of it and puts his hand on his pocket, rubs it in for a second like he’s trying to get it clean. Or maybe Hanjae’s just seeing things with his blurry hangover vision, his clear hangover discomfort.

“Right,” he mutters, and feels like he’s coming down from somewhere. His hold on the cup had faltered through their whole endeavor, and the spilled wine made a new damp on the couch’s arm. A story. He locks eyes with it.

“Don’t worry about me,” Haruki’s saying, back turned to him, halfway across the room already. The pot of leftover tofu clanks where he drops it, careless. “I’ll just shower.”

“You’re sure…?” Hanjae asks.

“Uh-huh.”

“Really?”

“Really. Now stop talking, alright? It’s not going to make me put my mouth on you a second time.”

Hanjae blinks once, and then too many times to even count. “Okay,” he says, quietly. “I’m– Okay.”

Haruki flees the scene before he notices, goes upstairs; comes back down and looks around for a long beat as if he’s forgotten where he is, where he’s headed.

He goes to the bathroom and closes the door loudly, then soon opens it again, peeks his torso out. He’s got a towel thrown over his shoulder and a smile that’s blinding when he says, looking back at Hanjae: “But next time. Make it up to me next time.”

April 14th, 2022.

‘Next time’, in industry lingo, as Hanjae has learned over the years, is the vaguest time scheduling there is. So Haruki said ‘But next time. Make it up to me next time’, and a day later LOOPiN released the final teasers for the ‘Punch’ EP, and things got hectic – music shows, variety content, a fanmeet, a fansign.

And then Seungsoo made everything come to a halt by jumping Kwon Dongwook and half of NTCD at Rewind K-Pop Fest on the 8th, getting them all thrown out of the event four hours earlier.

They missed the SHINee tribute they were set to be on. Hanjae even got handed Key’s bandana and the same blue shorts he used in the dance scenes in the ‘View’ MV, taken directly out of SM Entertainment’s archive. He had just stepped out of a makeup chair when he got the news, and was made to sit back down immediately to dismantle the whole look.

“Pussy didn’t even fight back,” Seungsoo grumbled, in their kitchen: icing his face where it hit a pole after Code pushed him off Hyunbin’s neck. He wouldn’t stop talking about Dongwook – it had been five hours, and everything that came out of his mouth was soon followed by ‘Kwon Dongwook that bastard’ this, ‘Kwon Dongwook that fucker’ that. “He made me look like an asshole.”

Hanjae ignored him. All he wanted was to drink a glass of water in silence and not look a single person in the eye that wasn’t Mijoo, his guitar instructor, in six hours time.

“You made yourself look like an asshole,” Taesong corrected him, pointing a spatula around from behind the aisle, and he sounded and looked angry in a way Hanjae hadn’t seen him in years. “You made all of us look like assholes, and now Minwoo’s going to kill you. He’s going to kill you because I’ll allow him to kill you. I will help him kill you. You deserve to be assassinated.”

“You deserve to be assassinated, you snake! You’re talking with Joseph Song, Taeng! Night Child’s Joseph Song, behind my back, about him, about me! Fuck you!”

Taesong dropped the spatula, put both hands on his hips, and looked up at the ceiling: his ‘Lord, give me strength’ pose. “I don’t talk with Joseph Song about Dongwook, or about you, Seungsoo. All we do is exchange schedule information to know when we all might meet, to try to keep peace between us and them because you’re all insane. All you, insane.”

“I’m not insane!” Seungsoo said, rising up from his chair, and Hanjae escaped the kitchen then, didn’t want to hear his bullshit claim to be functional.

He spent half an hour tuning and running his fingers over his electric guitar’s strings, and did the same with Dylan’s old acoustic one, and pressed random notes on Zhiming’s keyboard in their improvised music space, which was just a vacant corner in Heagon and Beomseok’s room.

On his phone, he got one message, and had to read it once and twice and a third time even, just to figure out what to say:

[haruhyung]: are you free ?

Hanjae sent, fingers flying over the keyboard:

[You]: Guitar pravtice with Mijoo nim sun

[You]: *practice

[You]: **soon

And shortly after, an afterthought:

[You]: Sorry

On his screen Haruki typed, deleted, typed again – the speech bubble looked like a glitch. Somewhere down on the first floor someone snorted, loud and mean, and Hanjae shuddered.

After five minutes, Haruki sent:

[haruhyung]: ok .

More texts came after those, spaced out between days or just hours, sometimes full sentences or just direct question marks, one time with a photo attached in the morning. Hanjae didn’t see it right away, went back to check during lunch break and found nothing but a short trail of deleted messages. 

It’s all the interaction they have behind the scenes lately. No more idle talk in the practice room, no more shared space in the house, just ‘free?’ and ‘no’ and ‘sorry’ and ‘ok.’

Now: a live session for the english version of ‘You Can’t Hold My Heart’ that they managed to film in one single take. Jooheon PD promises to treat them to something for it, and everyone’s saying suggestions on top of suggestions at the speed of light. Hanjae’s trying to gather up courage to ask for hot pot again, preparing for the complaining it’ll cause, when his phone dings.

[haruhyung]: ditch with me .

[haruhyung]: discreetly .

Hanjae takes a wild look across the studio until he finds Haruki: set against a wall in a corner, waiting to be looked at, tapping one foot on the ground. After what feels like a minute of unstable eye contact, but couldn’t be more than a second or so, Haruki ducks his head down and goes back to typing.

[haruhyng]: im really not going to ask again .

It takes little to no excuse to ditch dinner – barbecue, they have decided, and Hanjae’s trying to cut off red meat, doesn’t want to go somewhere so crowded after seeing so many people all day, he says, and Haruki interveins to ask Jooheon if he can pay their cab home. No one asks why he’s not going; no one was expecting Haruki to want to go.

They don’t take the free cab home. They’re instead back at Deh’s apartment complex, taking the stairs quietly.

“I’ll be coming three times a week to feed her cats this month,” Haruki says, unlocking and holding the door open for Hanjae so he can step inside. “She’s traveling out of town.”

“Hm,” is Hanjae’s shaky answer.

The inside of Deh’s apartment looks very much like what he would assume it would: neat, colorful, synthetic fur coats everywhere – really, everywhere.

While Haruki gathers up the cats, two small and loud things, Hanjae sits down on the printed loveseat and makes direct eye contact with a wigged mannequin head next to the TV, plastic lips shiny with lipstick.

When Haruki comes back to the living room, duties all done, he opens the big window on the far left and sits on the cushioned frame, one elegant leg over the other. 

He says, with a cig materialized between his teeth somehow, “Deh’s got a lighter on the second drawer– Second drawer, Hanjae– Yeah, that one, the green one. Come here. Bring it over.”

Hanjae brings it over, and Haruki tilts his head up, points to his cigarette, still hanging from his mouth. Hanjae lights it up for him after a couple of clumsy tries, and flees – bolts away with the lighter at the center of his fisted palm, goes to sit back on the couch, grows uncomfortable, slides down to the floor.

Haruki watches him move with an enerved smile on his face. “How funny,” he says, dryly, and then no one says a thing. He smokes, and Hanjae can’t stand the smell, coffs into his hand once. He sees Haruki move even closer to the window, peeking outside.

“So,” Hanjae tries, when it all turns into too much – the smoke, the quiet. He’s tracing a pattern with his finger on the carpet; a circle on top of a circle on top of a circle. “Do you– You come by often? To see her?”

Haruki makes a choking sound. His eyes are very narrow when he looks at Hanjae. “What are you trying to ask?”

Hanjae forces a shrug that he knows falls very flat.

“Deh’s a woman, Hanjae,” Haruki says after a beat, with a strong emphasis on ‘woman’, and Hanjae turns bright red and hot on his face, immediately responds with ‘Yes, I know’ – would rather shoot his own foot than insinuate she’s not. “And I’m not interested in women, so no, I don’t see her.”

“But you– You never told,” Hanjae stammers, and Haruki tilts his head at him, frown easing. “You never told any of us you’re not straight.”

“None of you ever just asked me,” Haruki counters, and there’s a little humor in him, somewhere – a bit of pride at that, maybe, until he recalls, “Except for Zhiming once, but he doesn’t count. Zhiming somehow always knows. Side effects of having a gay mom, I guess.”

“Did you know before? Before your… Your whole relationship, with– was your relationship what made you…” Hanjae stops talking. Haruki’s eyebrows have darted up and they stay up, waiting, challenging; ‘go on, finish the sentence’.

Hanjae sheepishly goes back to the mannequin head. It has a pink rhinestone hot glued on its nose, mimicking a piercing.

“Alright,” Haruki says, giving in. He rearranges himself on the window, puts his two feet steady on the floor, manspreading. “This again– Alright. You get three questions. Just three. Then we’ll never talk about it again, so be wise. If it’s something stupid I won’t answer.”

Hanjae accepts this, tonguing his cheek while he thinks. He has a billion questions, too many, all build up in these two months, but they’ve all escaped him somehow. He settles for an hesitant, “‘This again?’”

“I know you know Chihoon’s aware. And now Jiahang is, too,” Haruki says, and Hanjae patiently waits for more information. A whole minute goes by and Haruki, smoke coming in and out of his mouth, doesn’t offer him anything else.

“Since when?”

“Dylan? L.A. After the beach with you, he caught the… aftermath,” he grims, humorless. “And J.J knows since last week, after the festival. The day you ditched me for guitar practice with Mijoo nim.”

“That’s not,” Hanjae offers, alternating between looking at him and not looking at him; peeking instead at the shape he made on the green carpet, there still. “Not what I meant.”

“Of course not,” Haruki agrees, and his smile turns tiny, tinier, up until it no longer exists. 

He takes a big drag of the cigarette, the last one; tosses the bug right out of the window without putting the flame out. Behind him, the world looks pink, green, warm yellow. It’s the sort of spring that makes you feel like it’ll never leave you.

“Look, Hanjae, you don’t want to know everything. Not very pretty, with him being married and a dad and my boss and all. Bottom line is he casted me, he made me into a trainee, and that might have saved my life. I understood the way he looked at me and decided to just– let him have it. So I asked him out, kind of. He said yes, kind of. Next thing I knew, it had been going on for years.”

“Years?” Hanjae lets out, a little scandalized, too blunt, and Haruki gives him a look – ‘last question’. He rushes to amend it with, “Why?”

Haruki, with a hint of afternoon sun contouring his falling face, says, “I don’t know. I don’t know why,” and it’s the one thing Hanjae didn’t want to hear.

He wished for: because he loved me, or because it made me happy. But he knew it wouldn’t be that, felt it like a hollow in his stomach. From that day in the rain, he knew.

“I have a question for you, now. Just one,” Haruki says, turning his face back inside. Hanjae hums, letting him go on. “Are you dragging it out on purpose? Fucking me, I mean. Are you trying to make it some grand thing?”

Hanjae takes a beat to respond because he knows he should. He thinks about it deeply, eyes stuck in a corner, and shakes his head ‘no’. It’s the truth; he’s not trying to turn it into a grand thing – he understands now, with a tang of sadness, that he can’t make any of it special.

“Good,” Haruki says, and nods too. “You shouldn’t. I know marketing wants everyone to think I’m some sex god, but I’m not. I’m really not. You should just get me out of your system already. Quick and nice. It’s not like there’s a point in waiting, or… courting. We’re never going to date, Hanjae. You know that.”

“Yes. I know.”

“So…?” Haruki looks around, to all the space, and Hanjae does too. There’s very little of it, it’s a little room, but still, it looks so lived in. It looks like a place that’s loved.

Hanjae lowers his head down, eyes his small circle, fading. “Would Deh mind?” He asks, a whisper.

“Hanjae, she won’t know. No one will know,” Haruki says, and he’s grown annoyed now, shifty in his seat. “No one cares to know. No one gives that much of a fuck, or– It’s fine. It’s really fine.”

“I just– the thing is–,” Hanjae stutters, and tries to push through even when Haruki makes a discontent noise. “I never planned to do anything about it, or act– really act on liking you. This,” he motions to the drift between them, the awkward air: this, “Is not just me thinking you’re attractive, or– I really respect you, hyung, as my bandmate, as my colleague. If anything, what I always wanted was just for you to trust me with who you are, someday, because I think you’re– I just want us to be closer. Any way goes. That’s what I feel.”

He takes a peek up, over his own bangs, and sees Haruki’s eyes flickering. He widens his stance, knees more apart, and his voice sounds very low when he says, “You can grow real close to me now.”

Hanjae sighs at him, because he can’t help it. He tries to think of words, better words. Tries to build some sort of bridge out of them.

“Is it a good time?” It’s what he asks. “It’s been– It’s been a really long week, and you just… Aren’t you tired? I’m tired. You look like you’re tired.”

Haruki’s face clouds, gets taken over by something very cold. “I am tired. I’m tired of you rejecting me.”

“I’m not. I’m not rejecting you. I just don’t want to feel like I’m making a mistake. I don’t want to make a mistake, and I think, neither do you, right? Again?” Hanjae asks, and immediately regrets it when he catches the effect of the word ‘again’. It makes Haruki close his legs shut, makes his jaw tense. Hanjae says, quicker, “I’ve lost a team one time, hyung, by being impulsive – and it looked like this, it felt just like this.”

The silence that gets in between them is loud, almost sticky. Hanjae fights an inner battle to not fill it up with, ‘Please let’s talk, can you talk to me, really talk to me, just talk to me, and tell me what is it that you actually want.’

In a room away, the cats scratch a door, begging to be let out, and Haruki’s new phone goes off – a familiar ringtone, a lack of surprise or urge to pick up Hanjae’s seen before.

Haruki rests his head back against the wall, closing his eyes. His chest visibly rises and falls when he breathes. ��Ah, this is funny,” he says. “So not today, then, but soon? When I look better, not tired, is that it?”

“If you still want to.”

“If I still want to…” Haruki repeats, like he’s testing out the words, like he wants to figure out how they sound all together. And then rising up, out of the window, splinting behind the couch, behind Hanjae, “Okay. Alright, okay. If that’s what it takes– It’s on.”

“It’s… on?”

Over his shoulder, Hanjae catches the hint of a big grin being thrown at him. “It’s on.”

April 29th to May 6th, 2022. 

After Deh’s apartment and the sex that didn’t, Haruki turns into someone else for a week.

It’s impossible to not take immediate notice; when Hanjae and Dylan sit down on Friday to play Fifa at night he catches the whole thing, even though he’s not a fan of sports, or video games, or hanging out. Hanjae scores two goals and Haruki cheers him on, in an enthusiasm that makes it seem like he’s winning the real World Cup.

When he excuses himself to use the bathroom, Hanjae and Chihoon share a quick, tense glance.

‘What’s happening?’, Dylan mouths, putting the game on pause, and Hanjae mouths back, ‘I don’t know’, pressing for it to go on.

Later, they order takeout food for everyone, and Haruki doesn’t drink anything with his pizza except for a Sprite Zero. He gathers up everyone’s scattered plates after dinner and takes them to the kitchen, where Hanjae has just begun to do the dishes.

He circles him around the room, then leans on the counter, close, says, “Hanhan, what did you do with my KidSuper jacket? I can’t find it anywhere. Come help me look when you’re done with that. I’m in the laundry room, come help me, don’t forget to help me look, yeah?”

It’s an excuse. There’s no KidSuper jacket that needs to be found in the laundry room. Hanjae goes in, Haruki closes the door shut and immediately kisses him against it, suddenly.

They break apart, and Haruki taps Hanjae’s chin up, making Hanjae’s hang open mouth fall shut. He breathes into his face, mutters, “Cute– You look cute surprised,” and leaves – just leaves, vaporizes in thin air.

Six entire days of this: playing cat and mouse at odd hours, being shoved and kissed by Haruki somewhere, catching no sleep, having anxiety all night, wondering if anyone saw it, if anyone has catched on to this whole… energy. 

“You look like a zombie,” Haruki tells him, once – a direct whisper into his ear, with the slightest press of teeth. “Is it because of me? Are you not sleeping well because of me?”

It all comes to a halt on Friday, just as suddenly as it began, because Haruki snaps over something in the afternoon, and he won’t tell anyone what it is.

He locks Dylan out earlier than he’s ever done it, skips dinner, ignores calls; gets fully trashed somewhere between midnight and 4AM, alone. Beomseok had bought fancy imported dry sake for his older brother, a wedding gift he was keeping in the dorms, and the whole thing’s gone, drained.

Beomseok made a big commotion about it, went on to bang on his room door until the entire house was awake at 6 in the morning on a day off, soured everyone’s moods, split them into two: people pissed off at him and people pissed off at Haruki for pissing him off.

It’s tense through the whole day, with no one seeing eye to eye quite right, and when schedule breaks go this south Hanjae knows to expect an empty house after the sun sets.

Soon enough: at 6PM a voice message from Jiahang on their group chat, saying, ‘I’m going clubbing! I’m going clubbing and everyone can come with me! I refuse to not have a nice night tonight, I refuse it!’

Hanjae’s the first one to answer him, off the shower:

[You]: Pass

[jayjayjiji]: 🍅🍅🍅🖕🙄🖕🍅🍅🍅

Hanjae’s midway through sliding his shirt over his head when Haruki barges in without knocking. He stands there, arms up and tangled with the fabric, in his pajama bottoms, short hair wet. Haruki’s a figure that flops on his bed, face and stomach first.

He’s the only one who didn’t get a haircut for ‘Punch’. The hair stylist had run a hand through his hair, moved Haruki’s bangs one side and the other, said, like a joke, “But he’s perfect! He looks perfect already, Junghwa, what do you want me to do?!” It’s a wild thing now, at the back.

“I will sleep with you,” he announces, voice coming off hoarse and loud; drunk again, but mildly.

Hanjae, fully clothed, says, “Seungsoo–”

“Going out. Not a problem. And Minwoo, he is out.”

Hanjae takes small strides to get the burst open door shut. He takes a long peek at the two sides of the corridor: empty.

Behind him, he hears Haruki grumble, “These days, they’ve been so time waste. A waste. Why are you not caring?”

“What do you mean?” Hanjae asks, and comes back near, not too much. He’s still standing up in the crack diving his bed from Minwoo and Seunsgoo’s bunk one.

“I’m trying,” Haruki stresses. “To appeal to you. With my all, to get you to. Start something. You never do. Do something,” he commands at Hanjae, less angry, just agitated. “I am right here, so just– anything.”

Hanjae sits down on the edge of the bed, then. A calculated descent over the sheets.

“But hyung,” He stutters, and Haruki grunts something incomprehensible under his breath. It doesn’t sound like korean, it doesn’t sound like japanese, it doesn’t sound like anything. “Haruki, there’s people at home. No one’s left yet, we don’t know– Don’t know if everyone will.”

“So what? You were all always– So what?”

Hanjae hesitates, worrying his mouth. He takes one of his hands and slowly places it on Haruki’s hair, trying to somewhat pet it, but Haruki isn’t satisfied with that, and turns his face to the side, looks at him with a strong frown. Hanjae puts his hand back where it first laid on his lap, goes back to picking at the hem of his shirt.

And then Haruki reaches out a hand himself, and places it on Hanjae’s exposed knee, squeezes, sinks nails on it. Hanjae pushes himself further back, startled, and the hand follows, leaving a scratch; he almost falls off the bed trying to sneak away from it, and the hand stills, lifeless, not that far away.

“It is like,” Haruki says, and stops for a moment, gulps spit and something else down. “Like when you touch me is all so nothing. Like you do not… You do not really want me. Like you are not trying to make me remember. How can I remember. That you want me. I can not know if you are, just… Not leaving something behind. Like haunting.”

“Haunting?”

Haruki stops moving completely. “I really miss the way, really…” a breath. “The way you looked at me before.”

“And how,” Hanjae prompts, leaning closer, eager to hear it, “How did I look at you before?”

Haruki ignores him. “It is gone,” he laments, and Haruki actively looks like he’s grieving the death of it, whatever it might be. “You have not even fucked me yet, and– gone.”

It’s a quiet, long minute. Hanjae sees Haruki’s eyes go glossy in real time, catches the whole process up until Haruki turns his face away, presses it on the mattress again, hides it.

Haruki pushes his upper body up with his elbows, covers his face with his hands, inhales. Looks at Hanjae again, his eyes peeking through his fingers, dark.

“Ah, you are so nice, Hanjae. Very, very nice, you,” he says, voice still. He stands an arm out, matches every single word with an absent tap on Hanjae’s shoulder. “And all worried, all in your head. It is so annoying. So weird how you–” And he doesn’t say; doesn’t tell Hanjae what’s weird about him.

The hand on his shoulder goes up, scoops his jaw for a tiny moment, then yanks him forward by the back of his neck – Hanjae has to put a knee on the bed frame to not fully stumble. It’s a grip locking him in place, now, as Haruki drags his face near.

“Pick a fucking date. Pick a date,” Haruki tells him, and his voice almost doesn’t sound like his own; is a pure growl. “I am tired. Tired.”

He leaves the same way he came: a door meeting the lock loudly.

Before going to bed, Hanjae selects another shirt to sleep on, a clean one, red like blood in the water.

May 26th, 2022.

“I think I just– Hyung, I think it all comes down to the fact that I don’t understand what you’re asking, because you’re not– you’re not asking. We’re not communicating.”

Haruki’s long pace back and forth in the hotel room comes to a halt. He’s only in underwear under the bath robe he’s got on, black and with an embroidered logo on the chest and back – they both were, up until Hanjae put his shorts back on.

It didn’t take long for Hanjae to pick a date for them to officially have sex: the pre-Camp Camp filming days are the calmest, with the ease of certain success making everyone better to work with, smoothing all the nerves, and a day before they start shooting LOOPiN always have the liberty to do whatever they want. Most staff are too busy setting up cameras around the park, testing the traps, and putting the winning team barracks up to keep them all in check.

Hanjae brought it up to Haruki a couple of days before they traveled to Jeollabuk over their stale text messages, and promptly got an ‘yes’ and nothing further; Haruki kept his distance like a bride on a wedding day over the weeks, barely a blur on the corner of Hanjae’s vision.

So here they are, a day away from being shoved in a park to pretend it’s a jungle. Hanjae walked around with a condom in his short’s pocket since morning and he’s been trying to look forward to it, trying to rationalize the hollow in his stomach as positive anxiety.

By mid afternoon, everyone was leaving the hotel – absolutely everyone. Hanjae couldn’t put a finger on it, but he felt like Haruki had something to do with it. They were sorted into their dorm roommate arrangements by Junghwa, all in the same corridor, both of their rooms at the extreme ends. Hanjae waited for his text to come over Haruki and Dylan’s suite, then made his way in a quiet and dragged on zig-zag – tapped a little song on a vase with a single flower on the hallway table just to bite time.

Dylan was still there when he got in, angrily tying his hiking shoes, and he refused to look at them as he made his way out. He stopped at the door, turned, looked like he was about to say something.

Haruki went to shove him off the room with a tight, “No, Chihoon, I don’t want to hear you, not today, no one wants to hear you, leave, get out.”

Things happened at a weird pace from there. They made out for a long minute, came close to fully undressing then froze awkwardly in the middle of Haruki’s bed, paused it.

“What do you want to do?” Hanjae asked from where he was set on top of him.

“Whatever you want,” Haruki answered, absently tugging at one of Hanjae’s red ears.

So he tried to work with whatever, since he didn’t know what he wanted – he tried to remember some guilty ridden fantasy of his which Haruki had starred in and use that as a guide, but the search came out blank. Hanjae wasn’t getting them anymore, funnily enough, ever since he had been kissed by him a second time.

But no matter what he tried, be it a kiss on the neck or a firm hold on his tight, Haruki barely made a sound, barely seemed to engage and, the most defeating of all, he wouldn’t get hard. It took Hanjae a long moment to notice, too long, and he did so by accident; went to push him by the waist closer but his hand slipped down, and he noticed how limp he felt under his underwear.

That wouldn't do; he asked Haruki again he wanted him to do, what he shouldn’t do, and under the scrutiny Haruki only blurted out dismissively, “Stop, no one fucks to get comfortable, anyway”, and Hanjae’s hand fell from his shoulders.

He said, “What?” and Haruki, “What what?”

“What do you mean?”

“Mean by what?” Haruki asked, an uneasy sound, and Hanjae could almost feel him growing cold under him, losing body heat, so he stepped away.

That was a whole hour ago. They’ve been trying to recover, but the mood has gone sour. Hanjae has put his shorts back on a couple minutes after his boner fully died and Haruki seemed to take that as a personal offense, hence the walking.

Hanjae reiterates: “I just can’t know if you like anything if you don’t tell me or… respond. Physically.”

Haruki rubs a hand over his face. He’s annoyed but he’s trying to mask it, says like a tease, “What’s with the language? Did you do research?”

Hanjae sighs. He’s tired of hearing this tone on him. He’s tired of one too many things at once, a Russian doll of exhaustion. A block; the everyday chaos of work, another; the weight of lying to everyone, the effort of keeping it up, and the core one: Haruki not wanting him, pretending to do so, going about it like a chore, like something he must cross off a list.

“What am I doing wrong?” Hanjae asks. “Can you tell me?”

“No, not– You’re not doing things wrong, it just doesn’t happen, okay?” Haruki lets out. “I don’t really get hard, or anything.”

Hanjae processes the phrase word by word. “You mean, you mean never? Or–”

“Not never, just not always. Not a lot.”

“Hyung. Shouldn’t you get that checked?”

“‘Get that checked’,” Haruki parrots, half heartedly, and then quieter, to himself, “I need a fucking drink. ‘Should have sneaked something, should have– Got something.”

Seeing him stuck in place, an unpleased thing, Hanjae can’t help but think back to his snaggletooth days, the pre-rhinoplasty times, that one White Day in seventh grade where his deskmate pity gave him half a chocolate, and wonders if he’s lying, if he’s making something up to make him feel better, if he noticed that Hanjae’s not feeling great, nowhere close to nice.

He’s been hiding his right hand under the cover, trying to not let Haruki hold it, not that he’s tried to do that yet, nor does it seem like he’ll want to.

“We can just not do anything,” Hanjae reminds him. It’s his fourth time saying it, and it gets the exact same reaction out of Haruki each time: an annoyed huff, a roll of eyes. “Not have sex, if it’s not what you want. If I’m not– Not attractive to you.”

“You are, you are. Very attractive,” Haruki says. “Happy?”

“And if I am,” Hanjae prompts. “It’s okay, right? You think it’s okay?”

Haruki’s mouth hangs semi open, his eyes semi shut, when he shoots him a look. “What? I– What?” It’s almost a hiss.

“Can you just tell me why?” Hanjae presses. It’s the right wrong question; it sends Haruki back to pacing, his back turned to him. “Why do you want us to have sex?”

“You want this to happen,” Haruki tells him. “You always wanted it to happen, everyone knows, you made this happen, with all– everything.”

“And you want it too?”

“That’s such a stupid question! Am I not here? Didn’t I tell you to be here?”

“You’re not just,” Hanjae takes in air, sharp through his teeth. “Looking and understanding and– letting me have it, like–”

He can’t fully say it, Haruki doesn’t allow him, shuts it down with a sharp, “Are you my therapist? You’re my therapist now? Fuck off, shut up, be quiet for just a fucking a minute, will you?”

Hanjae withers. From a place inside him, he recalls, he had hoped. He had cultivated hope the size of a grain of sand that maybe, just maybe, the hesitation ment care – that perhaps Haruki liked him, and didn’t know what to do about it, how to go about it. A nice piece of fiction to cling to. But no. It’s clear now: no.

“I really don’t want to pressure you,” Hanjae says, and tries to make his voice louder as the phrase goes on, less miserable, but fails at it.

“Yeah, yeah, I get it, Hanjae, I understand korean, I understand what you’re saying, I’m not fucking stupid–”

“I didn’t say– I didn’t say you are,” Hanjae tries to reason, but all the sound gets drowned out; there’s only Haruki talking quickly, loudly.

“–So you can stop repeating all these good phrases now, these made up phrases. No one speaks like that. In the real world, no one says that–”

“I mean it.”

“–You’re not pressuring me, Hanjae, trust me, you can’t do that, no one– There’s no pressure, or urgency, or anything. I don’t feel any of that coming from you, so,” Haruki flashes him a smile, thin, ironic, sharp. It looks like something that would be carved out with a pocket knife somewhere.

“Then why,” Hanjae breaths. “Why don’t we end this here? Can we end this here?”

“Again?” Haruki asks, with a laugh. It’s a mean sounding one. “Are you serious?”

“No,” Hanjae says, and swallows. “All of it.”

He almost regrets saying it, given how hard Haruki’s face crumbles. It takes a full minute for him to recover, and Hanjae watches him try to piece an expression back together until he can no longer look.

“Bullshit,” he hears Haruki say, and then again, “Bullshit. C’mon, just. Give me a minute, alright?”

He moves very close, very soon, back on the bed. Their knees are touching again, and they both feel icy.

Haruki says, “I can do better, I promise,” and there’s a hint of a plea there. Hanjae hates to catch it.

“Haruki, it’s okay. It’s okay–”

“No, just, if you just,” His hands hover over Hanjae’s chest, unfocused, trying to be everywhere and nowhere at the same time. “I can do this, I can, really, if you just try to be more horrible, if you– if you force me, then–” and Haruki shuts his mouth very tight, looks down at the tangle of sheets between them, about to fall off the mattress.

Hanjae at him once and again, forces his eyes to stay open even though. He takes hold of both of Haruki’s wrists feather light, puts them away from him, pushes them to be on Haruki’s own chest. They fall limply on his sides once he lets go.

“Haruki,” Hanjae begins to say, and then stops, has no idea how to proceed. He puts his hands on his forehead, digging. He presses the heel of them over his eyes, hard. “I’m not… I’m not going to do that to you. I don’t want to do that, so can we not? Please? Can we not?”

He takes his hands off his face to try to look him in the eyes, to tell him with them to: I’m not doing that.

Haruki stags up, seems to tense from the heel off his feet to the top of his head. “This is so– awful, awful. What is it, your face is– It looks so–”

Hanjae takes notice of his frown, his quirked down mouth, his eyes – watery, blinking. It’s a sad face, an about-to-burst-into-tears face.

“I can’t stand this, I’m not– Not going to stand here, and be looked at like–” Haruki swallows dry, goes back into motion; picks his shirt back up from the floor, puts it on in a hurry. “I’m going to the pool. I’ll be in the pool, away from you. The whole trip, away from you.”

He stops abruptly at the door, a shaky hand on the handle. Haruki says without looking back at him, exasperated, “You’re gonna let me walk out? I’m leaving, I’m walking out.”

Hanjae says nothing, and experiences what might be the heaviest silence of his life. He feels it from within, taking the form of a bone crushing pressure.

Haruki is even quiet when he leaves, making the door fall shut with almost no sound; a complete dissonance.

June 2nd and 3rd, 2022.

Hanjae lays down, once he’s alone. He spends the rest of the day checking the door, checking his phone – a wild expectation followed by nothing, nothing, except for a tense engulfment of sleep.

Summer comes and Hanjae sees more rain clouds then he sees of just Haruki. It’s voluntary and it isn’t; they’re both avoiding each other.

But promotions are not done, yet, so it’s not as intense as it could be. Just yesterday they got sorted out to film a Heart To Heart episode, and had to scrap it midway because it was heavy, horrible, quiet. Their prompt was: Beach, and they couldn’t hold even a one minute conversation about it.

He got an email from Seo CEO in the morning: ‘Let’s all keep a serene work environment free of misunderstandings and intrigue’, he wrote, underlined and in bold.

Hanjae presses the cold bottle of energy drink against his face, the back of his neck – pure sweat after filming another music show performance. He’s by the vending machine, catching some air, seeing Idols come and go, staff hushing from one side to the other. Some of them bow their heads at him, and Hanjae greets them back with an enthusiasm he knows falls short.

There’s a small commotion in front of their dressing room when he gets there, and he could spot it from a distance. A girl group or at very least a group of around twelve girls, Beomseok and Seungsoo supporting their exposed arms on the doorframe when they talk to them, smiles warm and easy, so he knows exactly what it's all about.

Haruki’s the odd one out, in the middle of them, the center of all attention. He’s always been popular in the hallways, no stranger to little pieces of paper sneaked into his cafeteria orders, someone coming up to him and asking if they can take a selfie, if he’s got a minute – he’s known for dismissing all requests politely.

Hanjae tries to walk by them meekly, without touching anyone, just muttering polite ‘Excuse me’s until he’s allowed through; he isn’t allowed through. Haruki’s got one warm over his shoulder before he can get even a foot inside, before he can even process how, locking him in a clumsy armlock, turning him around, pushing him close.

“And what about him?” He asks the girls, and he’s close enough to press his cheek against Hanjae’s; they’re the exact same height, and their bones fall perfectly aligned. Someone laughs about it, someone woos. “What do we think of him?”

A girl, the closest to them, wearing the sparkliest makeup Hanjae’s ever seen says, joking, “Oh, him? Hmmmmmm, let’s see…”

At his back, Hanjae feels a lingering over and soon can hear Dylan say, a sharp whisper, “Haruki, stop that. Stop.”

Haruki ignores him. His hold on Hanjae’s neck gets tighter, turns into an one armed hug. “Hanjae’s very very shy, but he’s also very very nice. A proper gentleman.”

“Really?” Another girl asks – long curled hair, jet black, dimples showing. “I thought all gentlemen had gone extinct.”

“Noona, so did I! But not Hanjae. He’s proper old school.”

“If that’s true, then he’s cute,” she says, and comes boldly forward to pinch Hanjae’s cheek. Haruki watches her do so with an enthusiastic nod of approval, and Hanjae can feel his sharp sideways grin form in real time. “It makes him the cutest out of all of you.”

“It’s all true, trust me, trust me. He is the cutest out of all of us, yes. Can you believe he’s single? I think it’s so sad, how single he is, how alone he is all the time, always too lonely. We should solve that, no?”

The girl smiles back at him – amused, having fun, flirting with Hanjae, with Haruki, with the two of them at once in front of everyone when she says, “We really should.”

Around them, everyone’s gone into a frenzy over the situation. Seungsoo is slapping Haruki on his free shoulder, screeching ‘You’re so crazy today, Haruki, what’s gotten into you, you crazy man!’, and Hanjae can’t tell if he’s breathing. Then he can feel his lungs moving and nothing else. There’s a small turmoil under them, right where his heart should be, an agitation – fight or flight, and he fails both. He freezes, throat tight and dry.

And then: the enerved click of Junghwa’s heeled shoes, her voice loud when she says, exasperated, “No, no no no, out, out, out! All of you girls out of here right now, what is this?! Where are your managers?!”

The girls scatter in a hurry, all waving goodbye and giggling. Seungsoo puts his hand on his heart and makes a show out of sighing, looking sad, makes a couple of them laugh louder.

Door shut, Junghwa slaps him and Beomseok naked arms with her papers, half joking, half actually slapping them. “I leave for five minutes! Five minutes! What is wrong with you men!”

“We were filming Tiktoks! Innocent little Tiktoks!” Seungsoo says, but he’s laughing, proudly taking his beating. Beomseok simply steps out of her reach, shrugging.

Junghwa stags when she’s in front of Haruki, papers down. She looks for a long moment at his face, searching for something and Hanjae knows what it is: a sign of winter coming earlier.

She’s gentle with him in a different, more impersonal way. He’s the only one out of all of them Junghwa doesn’t call by the first name; she doesn’t use ‘kid’ or ‘boy’ or ‘son’ either.

‘Fukunaga-ssi’ is what she says now, asking if they can have a word in private, and Haruki complies, follows her out, mute.

Hanjae slides his earphones in and tries to not watch them – doesn’t want to look him in the eyes, and thinks he means it forever, feels like it’s a vow being made.

Everyone’s getting more or less undressed by the time he looks up again, falling back into their usual clothes, and the small glimpses of everyone’s torsos at the corner of his eyes are depressing, being back an old discomfort. He sinks into his seat, blinks something off his eyes, looks at the floor. Counts to ten, scratches at his marked hand.

Jiahang comes to sit by his side, gingerly tapping his face with a makeup wipe, a question on his frowned brow, a deep concern. He’s wearing one of Minwoo’s ancient black hoodies, the one with the falling apart NASA logo that fits him too short at the arms.

Hanjae has no idea why his mouth tastes so sour, seeing it; why the next breath he takes through his nose is so sharp.

Junghwa and Haruki come back soon enough, and he and Hanjae are the only ones left to change. She hurries everyone else out, says, “Boys, grab your things– and make sure you have all your things, please– Yes, Kim Haegon, I am talking directly to you, kiddo.”

In a blink there’s only a fan in a corner, making noise, and Haruki in pristine white performance clothes in front of Hanjae, wearing an overshirt with a cascade of thin chains on the back.

“We’re alone,” he says, suddenly, while staring at the floor. “If you want to you can–”

Hanjae stands quickly up, puts a wall and a door between them, turns the lock shut in the small bathroom attached to the room. He’s only sharing space with a shitter and a sink, a little mirror, and he doesn’t want to see even an inch of himself in it.

When he steps out, jeans and an white shirt, Haruki’s gone. His stage jacket lies abandoned on the floor, a tear on the shoulder, a loose chain on the opposite side of the room.

Hanjae staggers at the door, and sees himself walking back to pick it up without thinking. He’s very cautious when he folds it, very gentle when he tucks it under one arm.

[...]

On the ride home Hanjae lingers on the backseat, blearing some song loud enough to not think – pure instrumental, a booming bass.

When they stop in front of the dorm, he stays planted where he is; unties his seatbelt and then thinks better of it, clicks it back shut.

“I’ll go to the company,” he tells no one, just says it out loud, and no one bothers to object. He rides with Junghwa to the New Wave building, even quieter, almost one with the silence.

He doesn’t give her a chance to speak to him when they park, just hops off and goes straight through the reception to practice room #A2, the one with a bunch of old instruments tucked into the lockers, mostly hand-me-downs, some of them broke beyond repair.

He’s aiming for the one drum kit that’s probably around the same age Hanjae is, nothing fancy: it was some staff's son's, someone else’s teenage dream, and he said Hanjae could have it – it’s what his kid would want. It has million pieces of old stickers glued on it and Hanjae never felt like fully peeling them out.

His mind gets lost in the long choreography of setting it up piece by piece. When he finally sits behind the seat, his hands move on their own, just making noise.

And then he finds his way into a rock song through muscle memory. By the end of it, Haruki is a long silhouette in the corner of his eyes, dressed from head to toe in funeral black, and Hanjae almost loses the hold he has on his sticks.

Hanjae’s sweatier than before, breathing slightly through his mouth, still upset with him.

Haruki has a very firm walk when he comes deeper into the room. He stands a paper out in front of Hanjae, his face turned away.

“Phone number,” he explains, waving it even closer to Hanjae like a treat, a gift. “From the girl, earlier. The one that liked you.”

Hanjae lowers his drumsticks as he stares at it, letting his hands fall to his tights. He has no idea what his face is doing, but he knows that if he says I don’t want it, that won’t be all that he’ll say. He might cry; he might fail himself and cry from exhaustion, maybe. Probably something worse, uglier.

“It’s better if you start seeing someone, now. Really seeing someone. This whole thing, it’s so much bullshit. It’s bullshit, Hanjae, it’s like you said. So let’s end this here, like you asked,” Haruki says, and when Hanjae doesn’t move to take up his offer he shoves it in his pocket, walks away, goes to one of the side bars. He puts an extended leg there, a perfect stretch, as he keeps up, carrying an echo: “We’re not compatible, anyway. There was never anything really happening.”

Hanjae’s acting before he knows it. He puts the sticks on their case, tries to get the zipper shut with a hard push that doesn’t do anything. He tries again, harder, and the dent gets stuck on fabric, almost breaks.

“So don’t get sad, Hanhan,” Haruki concludes, turning around, crossing his arms in front of his chest, and his posture is perfect, fully straightened out – a wall again. “It’ll make me upset.”

Hanjae looks at him, as straight in the eyes as he can from a distance – keeps looking even when Haruki dips his chin down, offering only the top of his head.

“It was fun for a day, right? You had one fun day, got your dick sucked,” he says, and he sounds like he’s smiling, like he’s trying to make it sound light, to paint it as something funny. Trying to be intimate, a bit they did. “I don’t mind that we never really– It’s not important to me. I didn’t even want to have sex with you, so– who cares?”

Hanjae closes his eyes tight shut, tries to take a steading inhale. He hears Haruki say, as if from underwater, “But I did want to like you. That week, with all the kissing, all that– I tried to like you. ‘Just didn’t work. Didn’t work.”

“You tried,” Hanjae says, a breath. “You tried to like me.”

From the opposite corner of the room, Haruki puts his face back into view, and the smile he has grows more forced, more visibly sad. It reminds Hanjae of a chalk line drawn on a black board, crooked.

“I told you.”

“What? What did you tell me?”

“Hanjae,” Haruki warns him. “Let’s not make it awkward. I understand you had your ideas, all these expectations–”

“I didn’t. I didn’t have any expectations I didn’t tell you. Everything– I told you. I tried to be honest. At Deh noona’s. That was really all I had to say.”

“Sure,” Haruki says, with a tiny laugh, the hint of a sneer.

‘Sure’. Hanjae’s up from the seat, can’t no longer sit down, can’t barely stand being here.

Haruki keeps eying him like he’s expecting Hanjae to walk straight out of the door, and grows startled when he doesn’t, when he walks near him instead, at half an arm’s distance.

“Why do you think I didn’t mean it? That I was lying?” Hanjae asks the shrunken figure of him. “What sort of person do you think I am? What sort of person do you think being interested in you makes me?”

He’s close enough to see how tightly Haruki’s jaw sets when he looks away, at a nothing point on the far left. His hair falls on his eyes, a curtain. “What sort of question–”

“Every time,” Hanjae speaks over him, and it hurts to do so, because Haruki reacts badly to it, flinching. But someone has to say it; he has to say it, he can’t keep on not saying it. “Every time I wanted to talk to you, hyung, just talk to you, to make sure you were enjoying anything in any way, you looked at me like I disgusted you, like you hated me. Do you hate me? Why? What’s so wrong about all the things, all the things I've done? What’s not correct? I tried being close, and it didn't work. I tried to give you space, and it didn’t work. I still don’t understand, so can you tell me? Can you make it clear to me now?”

Hanjae’s out of air, when he closes his mouth shut. The whole room – sucked out of air.

Very quietly, Haruki says, “I asked for one thing, one thing, and you didn’t do the one thing–”

“You just said– You said you didn’t want to have sex with me. Then why? Why ask? Just because you could? You just asked because you could?”

“Stop,” Haruki tells him, voice rigid. His arms have unfolded and are now holding on to the side bar with all they have. “Stop with the whole why, why, why, just drop it. I’m not saying. Not saying.”

“You can say. I want to listen. I want the answer,” Hanjae says. “I still– I want to be your friend, now. I want you well. To think you’re not– To think you’re hurting, it’s painful. It’s painful.”

“Oh, you’re in pain– You’re in pain, you,” Haruki spits, and laughs, and sniffs, all at once. “Give me a fucking break! Go care about people that care about you, Hanjae, this is so pathetic, everything you always say is– Quit wasting your time with all of this, when you can get a nice girl, someone nice like you and have a nice, normal thing that’s not– Not this. You can choose to not have this, so I don’t understand, I don’t understand why– And you, you won’t understand why, so fuck off, just fuck off! That’s what I want, what I always wanted! For you to fuck off.”

It’s said like an ultimatum, and it sounds harsh enough for Hanjae to feel it more on his chest than on his ears. He tries to take another look at his face, to match the tone to an expression, but can’t – Haruki won’t let him, and Hanaje won’t insist. It’s not his place to insist, and it’s been made clear now. 

He leaves him alone, carrying himself very tightly out the door, out the corridor, out the entryway.

Out on the outside world, it’s already close to being night, and Hanjae takes in the stale air, looking up. He sits on the New Wave front steps despite himself, and the concrete’s warmth is a faint discomfort about to leave him.

The drum was still set there, in the room. Hanjae had wanted it, and promised to care for it, and still: left it there. He’ll have to go back for it, be back and fix it, put it back in place.

He should clean it first, and the floor, maybe the mirrors – not all, just some of them, the ones that look worse. Everything that looks bad, everything not quite right.

When he walks back into the practice room, there’s no sound, no lights on, and Haruki is no longer anywhere to be found.

The drum set is back on the case, compact inside the locker, exactly where it should be, exactly what it should be – as if it had never been touched at all.

[…]

Food tastes bland during dinner, and Hanjae doesn’t have it in him to pretend to have an appetite for Taesong’s sake.

He's been testing out recipes lately. He wants to impress his mother in law because he knows he wants to marry Yunhee, now. Not even two years together and he knows he wants to be with her forever, is sure that it’s mutual, it’s certain they’re in love.

He wants to show it to everyone; he gets to show it to everyone.

“Are you okay, Hanjae?” Taesong asks, over and over again – at the dinner table, on the couch during a drama commercial break, while they’re sharing space in front of the bathroom sink, brushing their teeth.

And each time Hanjae answers “Yes”, a tight “Yes”, and none of them sounds convincing enough, not even one of them he can get right.

Later, in his room: Seungsoo out, Minwoo out, and Hanjae all alone. Typical. Routine. Things as they’ve always been; as they’ve never stopped being, not even once. Haruki’s voice rings on his head when he lays it on the pillow: so alone, all the time, so sad, all lonely.

He checks the time on his phone: 8:03PM. Too early. Hanjae drops it, closes his eyes for a long time, checks it again: 8:16PM, and the pop up notification of receiving two messages from Dylan six minutes ago.

[dylari]: r things w/ haruki done?

[dylari]: plz answer quick

[You]: What do you mean?

[dylari]: idk how else to read this

Chihoon sends him a cropped screenshot showing a single lengthy Kakao message. ‘i don t know whyy is so hard’, the first line reads, ‘f or anyone ti just on ce do what i avsk and n ot sometind ellse like hsnaje he is sp–’

Hanjae stops reading it. He enters his phone’s gallery and deletes it, goes back to the chat and Dylan’s text now shows up as a blurry gray square, only says ‘media not found’.

[You]: Did he send you this?

[dylari]: yeah

[dylari]: our chat is his diary ig

[dylari]: when talking irl gets hard he blows my phone

[dylari]: i thought you knew

[You]: I didnt know

[You]: Sorry to hear you have to deal with that

There’s a long pause from Dylan’s side. When he resumes typing, Hanjae has long deleted both messages, regretted them – is sitting up on the bed with a hand on his face, a hard press, and regretting that too.

[dylari]: dude i dont mind knowing

[dylari]: look dont worry hanjae this is fine

[dylari]: im his roomie im on it i can take care of this

[dylari]: ill keep an eye on him now

[dylari]: im sure you tried your best your own way so thank you

[dylari]: telling you that now because he wont say it even if he wants to say it he wont so let me do that for you

[dylari]: good job

[dylari]: go breath

Hanjae falls asleep with his phone held tight, tight to his chest: 11:49 PM. He dreams of it ringing, ringing, ringing, and not being surprised, just being afraid.

[...]

It’s way past 1AM when Hanjae’s mattress sinks to the weight of Haruki sitting at the far end corner, some few inches away from his feet.

He had heard him unlock the door and come in, Seungsoo with him, making the most amount of noise – slurring more than singing some old pop ballad.

Minwoo had jumped awake out of bed, angry; threw a pillow at them, and then a shoe, told them both to fuck off, and disappeared.

Seungsoo began snoring as soon as his body hit the bed, loudly, which only happens when he’s exhausted; they must have danced all night, must have club hopped all night, trying to be too shifty to get caught.

Haruki stayed for a long moment in the middle of the room after tucking him in, silent. And then he sat there, in Hanjae’s bed, not moving, not breathing, Hanjae even thought, until he took a long inhale through his nose just now.

Hanjae won’t look; he can’t look at him. He promised he wouldn’t.

“I’m gonna leave you alone, now,” Haruki tells him – tells him directly, because Hanjae can almost make out the shape of his stare on his back, right at the shoulder. He bit very close to there once and meant nothing by it, thought nothing of it. “You’ll never have to talk to me when we are away from a camera, Hanjae. I promise. You’re gonna look around and I’m not gonna be there. Not an inch of me. I’m not gonna be there.”

He sounds so clear when he says it – slow, but still sober in a way Hanjae doesn’t hear from him much. He keeps on looking ahead into the dark, a hand gripping this pillow; his eyes won’t close.

Haruki swallows, resumes: “The thing is, you’re too nice, Hanjae, so, so nice, you’ve been so nice, so it’s not– It’s not you, it’s not. It’s me. I can’t– I can’t have that. Doesn’t work. I know it, for a long time. So with you, I was just… Lying. To you, not to me. I know that’s wrong, and I know what’s wrong and I just, still– I know. I’m sorry. I’m sorry, Hanjae, I’m sorry, I shouldn't have– I’m sorry. I’ll stop. I’ll stop, I promise, I’ll stop. I’ll stop everything, everything, so don’t cry, alright? Why are you crying? Don’t do that– Over me? Don’t do that. I’m sorry. Don’t cry, Hanjae, don’t cry, please, I’m sorry, I’m very sorry, I– I didn’t want to make you cry. I didn’t want–”

September 26th, 2023.

He can see Haruki clearly now, the stark shape of him. He’s still wearing the outfit intended for the airport – a sleeveless designer shirt, blue overcoat, and a wine purple trouser with an abstract David Bowie painted on the right leg.

Hanjae observes him from a small distance, catching his breath. He had run there, trying the piece the way back together from memory, growing a little desperate everytime he turned left and it wasn’t the right left; every time he saw an abandoned lot and it wasn’t the right lot.

But he was the one to find him in the end, sitting right on the floor, tense but not so small. He has a moment now to think of the right thing to say.

Hanjae wants to go with the essential: your sister’s at home, she’s looking for you, she wants to know you’re well. As does everyone; as does everything.

He opens his mouth: can’t make it. Opens his mouth again and takes another breath, a hissy breath, through the teeth.

Hanjae isn’t looking at the ground, this time, as he walks forward; he steps over a twig and it breaks loudly in half, disrupts his equilibrium lightly, and Haruki takes a slow look behind his shoulders. Their eyes meet then – and Haruki’s have grown tiny on his face, swollen. They quickly look down, at himself, to the ground.

“Someone found my spot,” he says hoarsely, with a single laugh. He picks one of the bottle pieces on the floor near him, raw glass, and throws it down the hill. It doesn’t make a sound. Hanjae keeps waiting for the glass to break and make a sound, and doesn’t hear it, never hears it. “They got rid of all my chairs– that sucks. That just sucks.”

It’s been a long, long year – 2023, that is. The oddest one yet, their busiest. Hanjae’s half an actor now, goes to TV and gives magazine interviews alone now, and Haruki models often, editorials and campaigns and a whole outdoor, once.

Hanjae squats near him, some inches behind; he’s still scared of how big the drop is. He waits, and waits, and waits more.

Haruki leans a bit on his back, tells him, “You can see his house from here. That's why I liked it, it’s why I came.”

Hanjae squints, looks ahead, trying to spot it even though he has no idea what to look for. He’s never been to Choi Sangwon’s. He knows some of the others have, back when they were Boy Of The Week trainees. Their reports were mixed: he had a big pitbull, a bathroom wall painted in a horrible shade of red, and all the carpets somehow smelled like they were brand new, like no one ever stepped on them.

Haruki laughs, meek, and points ahead; right at the only house with no light coming from the windows, empty. 

“That one,” he says. “I had a key copy, front and back door. I had a floor mattress, mine. I got clothes there, still– mostly underwear, sleep clothes. And my favorite necklace pin, family heirloom, in a drawer, there.”

Hanjae gulps something acid down his throat. “I see,” he says. “I– I see it.”

Haruki turns his whole face at him, suddenly. Looks sad, and tries to not appear sad, smiles. All white teeth. “Are you happy, Hanhan? Like, ever? Are you well, most of the time? Is your girlfriend nice to you, lately? You’re so busy now. With your dramas and all. I hope she understands. I hope she’s watching them, that she likes to see you on them.”

“I’m well, hyung. I’m– Yoora and I, we–,” Hanjae swallows again, dry. The raw truth is: happiness creeps up on him and it’s a battle to let it linger, when he looks around himself. He tries to start over, tries to sound firmer. “And you?”

“Pfff. What do you think? I know you saw the whole,” Haruki makes a hand motion – mimics an explosion, a disaster. “I heard you. Through everything. And thank you, by the way, for not bringing an army with you. For not acting like I’m a princess– Like I’m a runaway princess.”

Hanjae nods, uses that to say ‘you’re welcome’, and doesn’t mean it much. He should have brought an army with him. Or just his sister maybe, whom Haruki adores; avoids but adores.

Hanjae clears his throat, says, “Furumi’s at home. She wants to see you– talk to you.”

Haruki lets out an airy laugh. “Right. The baby.”

“You asked,” Hanjae reminds him.

“I know,” Haruki says, and turns his face upfront; looks at the drop, looks at the house. “I know I asked.”

“Hyung,” Hanjae says. “Can you tell me what happened?”

He sees Haruki run a hand over his face, up his hair, leave it there. He soothes himself before he speaks, a whole damn breaking sort of thing;

“It was so– I was checking on what Monica sent me to wear at the airport, and when I saw Bowie my first thought somehow was, did my boyfriend get a funeral? He was afraid of that. Of dying without a ceremony. His only real fear, I think, the only fear I figured out,” Haruki trails off, for a moment; seems to dive deep into a memory, takes a moment more. He comes back with a sneer. “Why the fuck Bowie? He didn’t like old music, didn’t like rock. Nothing connects– it’s just two dead people, that’s all, that’s it. And Chihoon was right there, right behind me, but for a moment– For a moment, it didn’t look like it was him. It looked like, from this one angle– Fuck, I can’t even say his full name, now. My first boyfriend, a name I can’t say. How sad. How very sad…”

He sounds like he’s giving Hanjae a cue to laugh. Hanjae doesn’t, wouldn’t be able to remember how to do so even if he tried.

Haruki says, “The thing is– The thing is, he made himself my life and then he died. He chose to die, picked a date and a place to die, and I can’t grieve, I shouldn’t want to grieve because it would be insane to feel– When I know he didn’t love me. He didn’t even fucking like me, treated that fucking dog better– Liked the dog better. It could kill me off, and he would say it was my fault. Everything about me made him so angry, all the time, all the time so angry when we were in private. My age, my face, my name, my accent. Everything. And everyone knows now. They all know, because I had to say– Because I can’t get a hold of it, lately. It’s always very cold in the winter, I always felt it, but now it’s the whole year. I feel very– very sad, cold, all year.”

“But they want this so bad, Hanjae,” Haruki tells him, quieter, holding in tears. “All of them. It’s not like you and me. We just landed here. To dance. To act. They live and breathe this thing, this Idol group thing, and it hit me then– It hit me that I can’t be like them, our members. That’s why I panicked, that’s why I couldn’t go to Fashion Week, why I had to come back here. I can’t do it like everyone else does it because it’s never been the same, my career– I don’t think I deserve these things. I didn’t even want them. I was in college, I came here to be in college. I wanted to dance, just dance, like my grandmother did– I wanted to do something for her memory, I wanted to be something she would be proud of, something anyone– anyone would look at and be proud of, and now no one fucking talks to me, anymore, my family doesn’t talk to me. I don’t know my mom’s new phone number– he didn’t even let me keep my mom’s new phone number. ‘Said I didn’t need it, said it didn’t matter.”

“I wish, back then–” Hanjae says, barely feeling his tongue moving. “That I did more. Anything.”

“You really wish that, don’t you? You mean it,” Haruki sounds like he’s marveling at it, that is a truly remarkable thing that Hanjae has said something and meant it. “You’re the nicest guy I’ve ever been with, Hanjae, really. The coolest, too. While I’m the worst one, right? Worst person you’ve ever been with. By miles. You can’t– Never again. No one like me. Never again.”

“Not like him again,” Hanjae tells him. “For you, not like him again.”

Haruki shows him an even sadder face, more wobbly, and shrugs. Just shrugs, looks away.

“I think no one,” he says, with a firm nod. “No one is better. It feels fitting to let that die, too. If I can’t get it right.”

“That’s not true,” Hanjae says, more with his clenched teeth than with his voice. “Not true. It’s not– Not better.”

“Oh, you don’t think so?” Haruki asks, and it’s just words. Just words being said to fill in silence, to cover up a strong sniff.

Hanjae can feel it again; the sharp line of disconnection rising, cutting the air in half, and he still doesn’t know how to stop it. He doesn’t know how to reach him.

He tries; he has to try. Hanjae licks his lips, forces some sound out of his throat: “You know– Haruki, you know, that all of us, everyone, will listen to anything you have to say. All the time.”

“I know that? Do I? And anything? That’s big. That’s really big. You shouldn’t let anyone say anything– no one should have to listen to just anything. Look at Chihoon now, Jiahang now. What good did knowing everything do?”

Hanjae’s at loss of words again, breathing around a lump on the middle of his throat. He’s too bad at this, too tired to think – just off a long action shoot. He still has his outside mask shoved into his jeans back pocket.

Somewhere in the distance, he can hear a dog haul; a coded hymn to the moon, maybe. Something about wanting life to stay still, wait a little longer. And then silence, a defeating one. A shuffling coming from Haruki in front of him.

“Can you, we– Ah, it’s so,” Haruki begins to say, shaking his head. “Can you hug me? If it’s not too hard or– bad for you. Just one time.”

Hanjae’s up on his feet before he’s even done talking. He stands his hand out, a timid invitation, and Haruki takes it, allowing Hanjae to help him up.

Haruki lays his forehead on his shoulder and stays there, being hugged, fully still until he takes a big shuddering breath. His arms stay glued to his sides, limp.

“I’ve never really– I never did just this,” he tells Hanjae; a shaky whisper, an old time secret. “It’s never been just this, before.”

Hanjae turns his face to the side and away so he can suck in air, so he can close his eyes shut, for a moment. He can’t think too much about it now. He taps at Haruki’s shoulder blades warmly, like a dad or a coach would – pat, pat, pat.

It gets an airy laugh out of him, a long and disbelieved one. “Bro hug!” Haruki exclaims when he steps away, whipping at his running nose, “You just gave me a bro hug. It’s really over now. We’re never going to fuck now. All that, over. What are we, if we’re bro hugging?”

“We’re a team. We’re friends,” Hanjae says, and thinks; you said so right here, once.

Haruki’s face makes too many things at once, hearing it. He looks down at himself again, accessing all the damage done to Monica Imano’s design. Bowie’s face has turned red with dust, and it looks even more smudged.

“VIANFINO is going to fire me,” he concludes with a dry chuckle. “They told me one more slip– the sponsoring, over.”

Hanjae bats an idle leaf off his shoulder and for once Haruki doesn’t flinch out of reach. He tries to give him a truthful close mouthed smile.

“Leave it to me– Leave them all with me,” Hanjae says, and leaves his hand there, a firm hold on him. “I’ll wash them.”

#&& ⠀ [ . . . ] hound on a hunt ⠀⸻ writing . #&& ⠀ [ . . . ] hound on a hunt ⠀⸻ haruki . #&& ⠀ [ . . . ] hound on a hunt ⠀⸻ hanjae . #&& ⠀ [ . . . ] hound on a hunt ⠀⸻ dylan . #fictional idol community #fake kpop group #kpop fanfic #kpop au #kpop oc #(maybe the Hanruki sex scene was the friends we made along the way?)