Seokmin is really not the kind of person who hides. Love? Pouring out. Happiness? Radiating. Sadness? Everyone feels the dark cloud looming overhead. Frustration? Well, that mostly turns into whining which kind of loses its punch, but the point’s the same. Not a hider. A seeker! Or—whatever.
But anyway. He’s definitely hiding right now, in an unused storeroom at a chilly television studio with Soonyoung’s tongue in his mouth.
The door to the storeroom was unlocked, okay, he didn’t like, plan this.
Mid-kiss, Soonyoung freezes and pulls away. Seokmin instinctively follows, a trail of saliva hanging between their mouths. It snaps and pools on Seokmin’s bottom lip as he stares at Soonyoung, feeling like he’s plunged into a dark well of confusion.
“Shit,” Soonyoung hisses. “Is that Seungkwan?”
Now Seokmin freezes too, listening intently to the voice on the other side of the door. It is Seungkwan. He’d recognize that vocal warm up anywhere. Which means Seungkwan is pacing the halls, trying to work out last-minute nerves.
They both stand very still. If Seungkwan doesn’t leave then what? They’ll have to open the door eventually. Maybe they can claim that they were helping each other look for like—props. Maybe they were helping the hair stylist find some hairspray. Yeah! Hairspray might work. Though why’d they close the door behind them, then? Seungkwan would definitely ask that.
Shit, shit, shit. How does Seokmin always get himself into these situations?
Fortunately, Seungkwan’s voice fades down the hall. Soonyoung deflates, relieved, when the sound disappears. “I’m going to run for it,” he whispers. “You wait at least ten minutes, okay?”
“What am I supposed to say?” Seokmin breathes out. He’s going to need to lie and Seungkwan will be able to tell if he does it badly.
“Say you had diarrhea or something? I don’t know.”
Seokmin scrunches his nose. “Well that’s not very sexy.”
Soonyoung squints at him. “Yeah, well, Seungkwan doesn’t care if you’re sexy or not.”
“I meant—” Seokmin sighs, realizing he shouldn’t have said anything, that this would be better as an inside thought. But now it’s an outside thought, so. “I meant—I was thinking about you.”
Soonyoung softens a little, half a smile twitching on his lips. He reaches up and pats Seokmin with his palm. “I’ve seen you every day since you were fifteen years old. Trust me, that ship has sailed.”
He lifts his eyebrows, shrugs, and then darts out the door without a glance back.
Seokmin sighs and slumps back against the wall. There’s a rain cloud forming in the room.
“Ah,” Jeonghan is saying later, stretched out across Seokmin’s brand-new couch with his feet pressed under Seokmin’s leg. “Here’s a picture from when you and Hoshi had just broken up.”
He says it so matter-of-factly, like that was just another event on the timeline of Seventeen instead of Seokmin’s personal marker of a halfway point in his boy band career. Seokmin before the break-up and Seokmin after the break-up were two different people, in his own estimation. One was optimistic and idealistic and the other one was practically a cynic. Seriously.
Jeonghan turns his phone toward Seokmin. “You can see it in your eyes,” he comments, voice still infuriatingly neutral.
It’s hard to stay mad at Jeonghan, though. Seokmin takes the phone from him and surveys the photo, a group shot with himself at one end of the line and Soonyoung at the other. By Soonyoung’s hairstyle, he remembers that at this point, Soonyoung had already started seeing someone else, a fact Vernon accidently let slip and then, when Chan and Minghao had stared daggers into him, commented with surprise “oh, sorry, I thought you knew.”
Seokmin sighs and hands the phone back to Jeonghan. “I was so dramatic then!” he says with a smile.
Jeonghan takes the phone but doesn’t look at it, instead staring hard at Seokmin. “It was a pretty awful time for you,” he says. “And the rest of us.”
Seokmin shrugs. “It wasn’t that bad.”
With a sigh, Jeonghan leans back against the couch pillow. “You’re rewriting history again.”
And, okay—maybe. It wasn’t that bad, though. It was only, threaten to end Seventeen as a group bad. Can’t be in the same room together without Seokmin crying bad. Half the industry is gossiping about it bad. Executives considering a leave of absence for one or both of them bad.
It could have been worse, though. It could have been a lot worse. Does that make him cynical or idealistic to think so?
Jeonghan hums lightly and looks up at him again. “At least you’re on good terms now,” he says. “I don’t think the band could survive if you two had all that going on still.”
“Yeah,” Seokmin agrees weakly, too afraid to look Jeonghan in the eyes. “That would be terrible.”
See, the problem is—
Okay, to be fair, there are a lot of problems. Seokmin’s tumultuous self-esteem, for instance. Lying to Jeonghan, which is one hundred percent worse and one thousand percent scarier than lying to the other members. Coming up with excuses to turn down Mingyu’s offers to set him up with various acquaintances is getting more difficult by the day—Seokmin is a singer, okay, he’s not paid to come up with all these new crafty excuses! He always latches onto Jeonghan during Going Seventeen games for a reason.
So one problem, among many, is that he and Soonyoung just know each other too well.
He’s wrapped up in Soonyoung’s bedspread when Soonyoung reenters the room with two delivery bags of food, the smell so delicious Seokmin has to suppress a moan that would be embarrassingly similar to—well, the other moaning.
“I figured you’d want this one,” Soonyoung says, handing him one of the containers from the bag. He follows with chopsticks and then grins when Seokmin really does let out a moan of hunger and delight, popping open the container lid and looking at the most beautiful dish of noodles he’s ever seen.
Soonyoung snorts. “You’re so easy,” he teases.
“Only for you,” Seokmin moons, smiling back at him with a mouth full of noodles.
This gets Soonyoung laughing, which is one of Seokmin’s favorite sounds, the way he throws his whole body into it. He opens his own box and promptly spills sauce on the hem of his boxers, then proceeds to mutter a stream of broadcast-unfriendly swear words for the next minute or so.
Seokmin does not get why anyone would prefer novelty to familiarity. He’s like a scholar of Soonyoung, knowledge stored up like dusty old books that he put away but never threw out. They know exactly what the other likes and when, having figured all that out years ago. There’s no pretense or fear of discovering each other’s ugly sides. Seokmin could happily cocoon himself in familiarity and just never dig himself back out.
Soonyoung finally peels off his boxers and stands in the middle of the room in the nude, frowning into his closet. Seokmin pretends not to watch, but. He’s watching.
Seriously, as a professional singer, Seokmin would like to think he’s an authority on the effectiveness of a reprise.
There’s another problem, though.
And that is that Soonyoung is—well he’s not mean, but—
“Who is Lee Soohyuk?” Seokmin asks in his best lying voice, like he doesn't already know. Of course he already knows. He’s spent the past week watching all thirty-two episodes of Born Again.
Jihoon rolls his eyes as Joshua snickers beside him. Seungkwan gives them a look, distracted by rearranging his hair in the practice room mirror. On the other side of the room, Soonyoung is busy having a whispered conversation into his phone. His smile is very broad, visible even half-hidden behind his hand.
“He’s, you know,” Seungkwan says with a wave of his hand. “Hoshi-hyung’s friend.”
“Friend,” Joshua repeats, emphasizing the word weirdly with a glance at Jihoon. Jihoon just rolls his eyes again.
Later, Seokmin asks the same thing to Soonyoung when they’re back at his apartment. He uses his best lying voice again, but it cracks a little in the middle.
“He’s just someone I know,” Soonyoung shrugs, staring into his phone as he slides farther down his couch, his back almost completely pressed against the seat. “Don’t you know him, too?”
“Sure, I mean, I know of him.”
“Ah, well,” Soonyoung says. He doesn't continue.
“Is he, like,” Seokmin ventures, very carefully looking at his slippered feet on the tile floor and nothing else, “Your boyfriend?”
“No. I mean, it’s just casual.”
“Oh.”
His best lying voice cracks and that one word comes out all wrong. Wrong enough that Soonyoung looks up from his phone.
“Aw, don’t be jealous,” he teases.
“I’m not.”
Silence follows. Seokmin doesn’t even dare look at Soonyoung, as he has to focus his energy on maintaining a neutral expression and not leaking his nerves all over the place.
“Hey,” Soonyoung says, sitting up and moving closer, shoving Seokmin gently with the heel of his hand. “We’re just having fun, right?”
“Yeah.” Seokmin’s throat feels thick and his skin feels itchy all over. He wants to get up and run out the door.
“Because you and me,” Soonyoung continues, “Well, we already know how that goes. I thought you were just wanting to fool around, for old time’s sake.”
Seokmin laughs a little too loudly. “Yeah! That’s what I want, too.”
“Okay, good,” Soonyoung says with a sweet smile, his eyes nearly closed as he leans into Seokmin’s side, one hand flat on Seokmin’s thigh. “I’m glad we’re so much better now.”
“Me too,” Seokmin says. His best lying voice holds strong.
Later, he texts Mingyu hey who were u gonna set me up with?
Mingyu texts back a little while later, and Seokmin agrees to go on a date without even bothering to look the guy up. Because, you see, Seokmin is an optimist. An idealist. For real.
Seriously.
You might think, given the apocalyptic nature of his and Soonyoung’s break-up, that Seokmin would have developed at least a small sense of self-preservation over the years and would, perhaps, glance at what he’s getting into before he jumps head-first into the shallow end of the swimming pool.
Or at least, that he would be able to look inside himself and recognize that a relationship he has to hide from his closest friends is not one he wants.
Well. He does look inside. He does see that he doesn’t want to hide. He does understand that he is not meant for secrets and lies.
But the next time Soonyoung pulls him into an empty room at a studio and pushes him back against the closed door with his magnetic brand of enthusiasm —
Come on. It’s not like Seokmin is going to say no.
bad idea, right? – DK/Hoshi (seventeen) – canon
Seokmin is really not the kind of person who hides. Love? Pouring out. Happiness? Radiating. Sadness? Everyone feels the dark cloud looming overhead. Frustration? Well, that mostly turns into whining which kind of loses its punch, but the point’s the same. Not a hider. A seeker! Or—whatever.
But anyway. He’s definitely hiding right now, in an unused storeroom at a chilly television studio with Soonyoung’s tongue in his mouth.
The door to the storeroom was unlocked, okay, he didn’t like, plan this.
Mid-kiss, Soonyoung freezes and pulls away. Seokmin instinctively follows, a trail of saliva hanging between their mouths. It snaps and pools on Seokmin’s bottom lip as he stares at Soonyoung, feeling like he’s plunged into a dark well of confusion.
“Shit,” Soonyoung hisses. “Is that Seungkwan?”
Now Seokmin freezes too, listening intently to the voice on the other side of the door. It is Seungkwan. He’d recognize that vocal warm up anywhere. Which means Seungkwan is pacing the halls, trying to work out last-minute nerves.
They both stand very still. If Seungkwan doesn’t leave then what? They’ll have to open the door eventually. Maybe they can claim that they were helping each other look for like—props. Maybe they were helping the hair stylist find some hairspray. Yeah! Hairspray might work. Though why’d they close the door behind them, then? Seungkwan would definitely ask that.
Shit, shit, shit. How does Seokmin always get himself into these situations?
Fortunately, Seungkwan’s voice fades down the hall. Soonyoung deflates, relieved, when the sound disappears. “I’m going to run for it,” he whispers. “You wait at least ten minutes, okay?”
“What am I supposed to say?” Seokmin breathes out. He’s going to need to lie and Seungkwan will be able to tell if he does it badly.
“Say you had diarrhea or something? I don’t know.”
Seokmin scrunches his nose. “Well that’s not very sexy.”
Soonyoung squints at him. “Yeah, well, Seungkwan doesn’t care if you’re sexy or not.”
“I meant—” Seokmin sighs, realizing he shouldn’t have said anything, that this would be better as an inside thought. But now it’s an outside thought, so. “I meant—I was thinking about you.”
Soonyoung softens a little, half a smile twitching on his lips. He reaches up and pats Seokmin with his palm. “I’ve seen you every day since you were fifteen years old. Trust me, that ship has sailed.”
He lifts his eyebrows, shrugs, and then darts out the door without a glance back.
Seokmin sighs and slumps back against the wall. There’s a rain cloud forming in the room.
“Ah,” Jeonghan is saying later, stretched out across Seokmin’s brand-new couch with his feet pressed under Seokmin’s leg. “Here’s a picture from when you and Hoshi had just broken up.”
He says it so matter-of-factly, like that was just another event on the timeline of Seventeen instead of Seokmin’s personal marker of a halfway point in his boy band career. Seokmin before the break-up and Seokmin after the break-up were two different people, in his own estimation. One was optimistic and idealistic and the other one was practically a cynic. Seriously.
Jeonghan turns his phone toward Seokmin. “You can see it in your eyes,” he comments, voice still infuriatingly neutral.
It’s hard to stay mad at Jeonghan, though. Seokmin takes the phone from him and surveys the photo, a group shot with himself at one end of the line and Soonyoung at the other. By Soonyoung’s hairstyle, he remembers that at this point, Soonyoung had already started seeing someone else, a fact Vernon accidently let slip and then, when Chan and Minghao had stared daggers into him, commented with surprise “oh, sorry, I thought you knew.”
Seokmin sighs and hands the phone back to Jeonghan. “I was so dramatic then!” he says with a smile.
Jeonghan takes the phone but doesn’t look at it, instead staring hard at Seokmin. “It was a pretty awful time for you,” he says. “And the rest of us.”
Seokmin shrugs. “It wasn’t that bad.”
With a sigh, Jeonghan leans back against the couch pillow. “You’re rewriting history again.”
And, okay—maybe. It wasn’t that bad, though. It was only, threaten to end Seventeen as a group bad. Can’t be in the same room together without Seokmin crying bad. Half the industry is gossiping about it bad. Executives considering a leave of absence for one or both of them bad.
It could have been worse, though. It could have been a lot worse. Does that make him cynical or idealistic to think so?
Jeonghan hums lightly and looks up at him again. “At least you’re on good terms now,” he says. “I don’t think the band could survive if you two had all that going on still.”
“Yeah,” Seokmin agrees weakly, too afraid to look Jeonghan in the eyes. “That would be terrible.”
See, the problem is—
Okay, to be fair, there are a lot of problems. Seokmin’s tumultuous self-esteem, for instance. Lying to Jeonghan, which is one hundred percent worse and one thousand percent scarier than lying to the other members. Coming up with excuses to turn down Mingyu’s offers to set him up with various acquaintances is getting more difficult by the day—Seokmin is a singer, okay, he’s not paid to come up with all these new crafty excuses! He always latches onto Jeonghan during Going Seventeen games for a reason.
So one problem, among many, is that he and Soonyoung just know each other too well.
He’s wrapped up in Soonyoung’s bedspread when Soonyoung reenters the room with two delivery bags of food, the smell so delicious Seokmin has to suppress a moan that would be embarrassingly similar to—well, the other moaning.
“I figured you’d want this one,” Soonyoung says, handing him one of the containers from the bag. He follows with chopsticks and then grins when Seokmin really does let out a moan of hunger and delight, popping open the container lid and looking at the most beautiful dish of noodles he’s ever seen.
Soonyoung snorts. “You’re so easy,” he teases.
“Only for you,” Seokmin moons, smiling back at him with a mouth full of noodles.
This gets Soonyoung laughing, which is one of Seokmin’s favorite sounds, the way he throws his whole body into it. He opens his own box and promptly spills sauce on the hem of his boxers, then proceeds to mutter a stream of broadcast-unfriendly swear words for the next minute or so.
Seokmin does not get why anyone would prefer novelty to familiarity. He’s like a scholar of Soonyoung, knowledge stored up like dusty old books that he put away but never threw out. They know exactly what the other likes and when, having figured all that out years ago. There’s no pretense or fear of discovering each other’s ugly sides. Seokmin could happily cocoon himself in familiarity and just never dig himself back out.
Soonyoung finally peels off his boxers and stands in the middle of the room in the nude, frowning into his closet. Seokmin pretends not to watch, but. He’s watching.
Seriously, as a professional singer, Seokmin would like to think he’s an authority on the effectiveness of a reprise.
There’s another problem, though.
And that is that Soonyoung is—well he’s not mean, but—
“Who is Lee Soohyuk?” Seokmin asks in his best lying voice, like he doesn't already know. Of course he already knows. He’s spent the past week watching all thirty-two episodes of Born Again.
Jihoon rolls his eyes as Joshua snickers beside him. Seungkwan gives them a look, distracted by rearranging his hair in the practice room mirror. On the other side of the room, Soonyoung is busy having a whispered conversation into his phone. His smile is very broad, visible even half-hidden behind his hand.
“He’s, you know,” Seungkwan says with a wave of his hand. “Hoshi-hyung’s friend.”
“Friend,” Joshua repeats, emphasizing the word weirdly with a glance at Jihoon. Jihoon just rolls his eyes again.
Later, Seokmin asks the same thing to Soonyoung when they’re back at his apartment. He uses his best lying voice again, but it cracks a little in the middle.
“He’s just someone I know,” Soonyoung shrugs, staring into his phone as he slides farther down his couch, his back almost completely pressed against the seat. “Don’t you know him, too?”
“Sure, I mean, I know of him.”
“Ah, well,” Soonyoung says. He doesn't continue.
“Is he, like,” Seokmin ventures, very carefully looking at his slippered feet on the tile floor and nothing else, “Your boyfriend?”
“No. I mean, it’s just casual.”
“Oh.”
His best lying voice cracks and that one word comes out all wrong. Wrong enough that Soonyoung looks up from his phone.
“Aw, don’t be jealous,” he teases.
“I’m not.”
Silence follows. Seokmin doesn’t even dare look at Soonyoung, as he has to focus his energy on maintaining a neutral expression and not leaking his nerves all over the place.
“Hey,” Soonyoung says, sitting up and moving closer, shoving Seokmin gently with the heel of his hand. “We’re just having fun, right?”
“Yeah.” Seokmin’s throat feels thick and his skin feels itchy all over. He wants to get up and run out the door.
“Because you and me,” Soonyoung continues, “Well, we already know how that goes. I thought you were just wanting to fool around, for old time’s sake.”
Seokmin laughs a little too loudly. “Yeah! That’s what I want, too.”
“Okay, good,” Soonyoung says with a sweet smile, his eyes nearly closed as he leans into Seokmin’s side, one hand flat on Seokmin’s thigh. “I’m glad we’re so much better now.”
“Me too,” Seokmin says. His best lying voice holds strong.
Later, he texts Mingyu hey who were u gonna set me up with?
Mingyu texts back a little while later, and Seokmin agrees to go on a date without even bothering to look the guy up. Because, you see, Seokmin is an optimist. An idealist. For real.
Seriously.
You might think, given the apocalyptic nature of his and Soonyoung’s break-up, that Seokmin would have developed at least a small sense of self-preservation over the years and would, perhaps, glance at what he’s getting into before he jumps head-first into the shallow end of the swimming pool.
Or at least, that he would be able to look inside himself and recognize that a relationship he has to hide from his closest friends is not one he wants.
Well. He does look inside. He does see that he doesn’t want to hide. He does understand that he is not meant for secrets and lies.
But the next time Soonyoung pulls him into an empty room at a studio and pushes him back against the closed door with his magnetic brand of enthusiasm —
Come on. It’s not like Seokmin is going to say no.
He’s an optimist. You know?