Chapter Text
The thing about Zhang Hao is that Jiwoong hates him immediately.
Not as intensely as it’ll grow to become, and not instantly, but it’s a near thing.
It’s not the cocky musical genius, ace leader that does it, or the self-satisfied smirk he buries beneath his hands after getting showered in praise and gaining all-stars, but rather the first warbling note of his violin, horsehair against wire.
Like a desert rose blooming amidst a thunderstorm, Jiwoong will describe it as one day, a few months in the future when the feeling nagging at his gut will have solidified itself into something more personal, something with a little more meaning. He will not say what he really means, that he knew from the beginning Hao was no rose.
No, Zhang Hao is the storm. Wind and rain made into man, his voice a thunderclap, the flash of teeth he hides with that smile of his a rogue strike of lightning. Two weeks after that Hao will push him up against a wall and press their mouths together and Jiwoong will learn that no matter how carefully you walk in a storm you’re bound to get wet, that it’s less of a precaution and more of an inevitability. You can bring an umbrella, wear a coat, check the forecast, but if you don’t stay inside, hide the bits of you that matter, then you’ve already lost that fight. You can’t beat the sky, after all.
But for now, all Jiwoong can think is: Fuck, shit. That’s one less spot for me. On stage, Zhang Hao draws his bow one last time, music piercing through the room, and secures a spot in the debut group. Four bars and a big company and he’s already beaten Jiwoong’s decade and more of—of—fuck, he doesn’t even want to think about it.
The harshness of the stage lights turns the dark mahogany of Zhang Hao’s hair red. For a moment, that’s all Jiwoong sees. From his spot, high up in the studio, he can catch a glance of Hao’s gaze, hungry and greedy and terrible, but then he blinks and it’s gone, back to a pleasant mask of downturned shyness and humble pride.
Right then and there, Jiwoong decides that he hates him.
ꔛ
The first time they stand in the same room together, Jiwoong is half-shirtless.
Not by design, and certainly not by choice, but Hao bustles into his room without another care in the world, calling for Gyuvin and proceeds to stops dead in his tracks. They both freeze.
Jiwoong looks at him, looks at him looking back at Jiwoong, then hastily pulls his shirt down from where he’d been putting it on when he notices where eyes linger. The line of Hao’s gaze is too shrewd for it to be completely innocent.
Hao’s hair is wet. A drop of water slides from the tip of his hair and splatters against the hardwood floors. He must be freshly showered too. Jiwoong considers the lean line of his neck, the little mole on his cheek, the blown look in his eyes, and thinks, oh, oh. Oh shit. Oh, shit.
“Uh,” Zhang Hao says at last. Not to him, but at him. Then a voice shouts for him, down the corridor, and he’s gone without another word.
That was… That was awkward. No, it was something more horrible, because awkward comes and goes like the tide, but this stays in the room even after Hao has left, permeating, hovering, insistent. That was charged, and the thing about electricity is that it drains and drains until it leaves the host behind, only to return just as quickly every time the circuit comes together. Jiwoong knows and Hao knows and worst of all they both know that the other knows, exactly what this is and exactly what this means.
This becomes a recurring pattern. They stand in the same room, time and time again, but they do not speak to each other. Every time they brush against each other, they avoid contact, and the air between them turns electric without fail.
They look at each other, though. That, even Jiwoong cannot pretend to deny. They look at each other, and oh, shoot the elephant in the room dead already. There is a lot of looking.
ꔛ
Okay, alright. Revisit that first thought: Jiwoong hates Zhang Hao. Now add a little disclaimer right underneath it, in the lightest shade of gray you can get away with, print it as fine as the ink will allow.
Addendum. Post-script. Footnote. It doesn’t change what the text says. Jiwoong hates Zhang Hao, but he also wants him just as much.
Now you know the legality of it. Then you can ask the question: Jiwoong hates Zhang Hao, but does he want him enough to act on it?
Jiwoong asks himself the same thing. The answer is no. He asks himself again, after Hao cries during eliminations and then Hao injures himself dancing and Hao’s voice goes hoarse and where he should find sympathy he only finds a stirring in his gut, like somebody stuck a spoon in him and decided to make a soup out of whatever was left. The answer is still no, but it wavers. It catches in the air, like a loose piece of thread.
Rephrase the question. Take the weight of it and knead it into the shape of a knife and sharpen it until it, too, learns how to slice where it will hurt: Jiwoong wants Zhang Hao, but does he hate him enough to act on it?
That one Jiwoong does not have an answer to. He’s not sure he would like what it is, at any rate. The issue is not that he doesn’t have anything to say about it, the issue is that he has too much, and Jiwoong has always been horrible at writing essays.
Put it this way. If it was multiple choice, Jiwoong could scribble in any of the boxes and leave it at that. It’s easy to put yourself into a box and let that be all that defines what’s right or wrong. But when you put blank paper in front of him, he’ll write and write until he runs out of space and he runs out of time and then at the end he’ll see what he couldn’t at the beginning, that he’s written nothing but pages and pages full of justifications and nothing about what really matters. Evidence without a thesis. Results without a hypothesis. No yolk, just the whites, too runny and too rubbery at the same time.
Missing the point is what Jiwoong does. Unfortunately for him, driving it home is sort of Zhang Hao’s favourite pastime.
ꔛ
They are not close enough to touch. Metaphorically, of course, and by all social norms that sane, normal humans follow. In reality, Hao curls an arm around his neck, the tips of his fingers brushing against the collar of his shirt for a moment and his nails scraping lightly against skin and bone, and the warm puff of his breath skitters across Jiwoong's cheek.
"Here's a handsome guy!" Hao trills to the camera that he then to shove in Jiwoong's face. Haruto's accompanying gasp of excitement is nothing but background noise as Jiwoong blinks, buying time to seethe in silence under the facade of looking lost. This is the first time they’ve talked.
Well, to be more specific, this is the first time they've talked to each other, and not over or around. Two days ago Jiwoong went from third to fifth, and Hao went from fifth to second. Jiwoong wants to be mature about it, but Hao is making it very difficult right now, his smile is bright and challenging, as if to say what are you going to do about it? and god, fuck being mature, Jiwoong hates him. Wants to bite him all over to see if he'd cry just as prettily as he did during eliminations, watch him bruise black and blue and purple, feel the lean line of his throat under his palm, his mouth, his teeth.
To sum up the salt in the wound: Jiwoong is on a downwards trend. Zhang Hao is not. Second to third to fifth may not seem like a lot, but Jiwoong knows better than most how things in this industry like to come in exponential increments. It’s not thirty-three spots, but it could be, and the not-knowing-ness of it is somehow more gut-wrenching than if they decide to do worse than misplace a harmless comment or an unfocused glance of his again. How large the gap will stretch between him and the top next time, fuck if anybody knows, not when they can’t play God this time. Jiwoong would almost prefer it if they could. At least that way he can know from the start how much of his heart he can give away and survive.
No, he would have put all of it on the line anyways, regardless of the results. Jiwoong is kind of crazy, and he knows it, and the whole world knows it, and the only God in this story is the stage. Nothing else can touch him. So yeah, Kim Jiwoong is a little insane. Kim Jiwoong is a lot insane. Kim Jiwoong will let his heart bleed out on the stage if it lets him, and Kim Jiwoong does self-preservation the way the editing team does subtlety. Who goes through three unsuccessful debuts and worse than that and then comes back for more? Kim Jiwoong, that’s who.
Back to Zhang Hao. He’s a much easier topic for Jiwoong to think about, because hating somebody else may do fuck-all to cover up how much he hates himself, but it’s distracting and what has Jiwoong been doing all these years if not blinding himself to the point? There's another name for it, this sort of hate. The kind that confounds itself with want, the kind that breeds resentment and grows an appetite and builds like a balloon about to burst, or a note on the verge of cracking.
Out of the corner of his eye, he notices somebody shooting him a confused peek. Ah, he's been quiet for too long. "I've been wanting to learn Chinese recently," he entertains, almost disappointed when Hao finally takes his hand off him, even though that's what he wanted in the first place.
They play a different kind of chess in China, don't they? Jiwoong pretends not to notice the heat of Hao's gaze on him, the weight of it, the cleave of it. Acknowledgment will tear him to shreds, and Jiwoong intends to win, no matter what the game turns out to be.
Jiwoong stares forward into the camera. Zhang Hao keeps looking at him. Jiwoong recites his lines. Jiwoong wins this round.
ꔛ
Jiwoong debuts.
At the base of the stage, he exhales, letting that mark the end of a war, and when he breathes again he is somebody else. Not somebody new, not somebody better. Just somebody else. Amidst the cacophony and the pandemonium, he looks over the hundreds and thousands of people watching him, hearing nothing but a roar in his ears, and meets gazes with Zhang Hao.
How accidental. How coincidental. How much, truly? Jiwoong knows the answer but will refuse to admit it out of principle. Eighth will not mean anything by tomorrow, but it still bruises a little, because second is where he started out, and second is where he still believes Hao will be at the end of the night by this point. Of course, later he will realise that he should have known. Zhang Hao has a penchant for surpassing his expectations. Or to be exact, taking all of them and stomping on them until they become nothing less than a scorch mark in the dust.
But here he is, right before his eyes, and surely Jiwoong can have this much? There’s no fight left in him. He lets Hao hug him, lets himself sink into and enjoy that lean line of warmth, body against body, too exhausted and out of his mind to keep score right now, and then—and then—
And then he catches Hanbin’s eye.
Woah. Hold up. Record scratch. Freeze frame. Go back to before the plot was lost. Sung Hanbin? Where the hell had that come from?
The truth is too complicated to fully grasp, but it’s also been right in front of your face the whole time. Jiwoong has not forgotten to introduce Hanbin, really. Jiwoong has been avoiding introducing Hanbin, which is a bad decision he’s actively chosen to partake in, because thinking about Hanbin only brings a rush of guilt to the forefront of everything else these days.
Introducing Hanbin properly will take too long. Sung Hanbin is kind. Sung Hanbin is talented. Sung Hanbin smiles with too many teeth. Jiwoong has not yet decided if that is a good thing or not. The only thing about Sung Hanbin relevant to the story right now is that for everything Jiwoong hates about Hao, Hanbin loves him in equal, no, greater measures for.
The easiest demonstration of this has over half an hour of recorded content in aired episodes and counting. The first demonstration of this will go all the way back to before even the group battles. Nothing crazy, no crying, no overblown confession. It’s laughable in its simplicity. All that occurs is: Hao walks past during lunch the day after signal song filming. Hanbin calls out to him. Jiwoong just so happened to be close enough to hear it.
In Korean, Hao is two syllables. In Chinese, it is only one. Hanbin says it the correct way, which only makes it all the more impressive how it only takes him one syllable to give a name assonance to love, and a yearning want so deep that it could flood a room, as long as both of them are present in it.
Even back then, he understood immediately. He understood what it meant. He had fucked up. He had fucked up so badly that he wasn’t sure how he was ever going to recover. If there was any chance of recovery by that point, Jiwoong would have liked to dial an emergency hotline and ask for forgiveness. Beg for it, because it’s the only way he’s going to come out alive.
To put it simply, Sung Hanbin is first. Sung Hanbin is first and he is going to be first and unless something catastrophic happens and everybody wakes up with memory loss he will always be first. He is also Jiwoong’s friend. Jiwoong hates Zhang Hao. Hanbin loves him.
This is batshit, Jiwoong recognised, and had to sit down before he felt any fainter. Dimly, he made a note to double-check what kind of survival show he was supposed to be on again.
Sung Hanbin is his friend, but more than that, he could be Jiwoong’s friend, so Jiwoong holds back and doubles in on his efforts to not look at Hao, except this only sort of makes it worse, and then Hao slings an arm around his neck during their first conversation and misguided loyalty and hope flies out the window.
Here’s the thing: Jiwoong knows what’s going on between him and Zhang Hao, and he’s a hundred percent sure Zhang Hao knows what it is too. That’s not the important bit.
The part that really matters is that now, Hanbin knows as well, and even a fool smarter than Jiwoong would be able to see why that might become a problem. See what’s coming, a thousand miles away. See the crash and the ruin and the fallout, a thousand miles before it happens.
But Jiwoong is good at missing the point. Jiwoong is also sort of an idiot, if he’s going to be honest, when it comes to the important bits and the parts that really matter. Jiwoong pretends he does not understand what this will bring for all of them, lets go of Hao, and walks up the stairs to stardom, to a new life, to the only life he’s ever really known.
ꔛ
The afternoon before their first broadcast, Jiwoong and Hao sit in a car alone and do not talk to each other.
Jiwoong is content to let this last. Hao is not.
“You know they’re going to ask us who we’re awkward with later, right?” The way he says it is infuriating, all causal nonchalance.
Jiwoong nods. In the best-case scenario, he’ll be able to skip out on answering entirely. In the worst one… well, four hours later Jiwoong will come to live it, so it’s more of a foregone conclusion waiting to come to fruition than anything.
“It’s gotta be you and me, right?” Hao continues on. Jiwoong wants to throttle him so badly it makes him sick with the desire.
Jiwoong imagines allowing himself a moment of weakness, to give Hao the slice of cruelty he clearly wants, like wild animals circling each other in a fight. Are you picking a fight? He could ask. As pleasantly and politely as he can manage, so that they can stay under the guise of this conversation they're having. My apologies, Zhang-ssi. Kindly eat shit.
"It doesn’t have to be. Let's be closer from now, Hao-ah," he says in the end. If he lets Hao win he'll lose interest, and Jiwoong doesn't want to think about what that might mean for—for the team. The thing about having been fucked over so many times in his life is that Jiwoong recognises when he's become part of a game, and with the way Hao looks at him he's not sure if he's supposed to be a player or a piece.
The corner of Zhang Hao's twitches, toeing the line between purposefully shy and vicious, tight-lipped like he's trying to hide his teeth. Would they be bared? Jiwoong wonders. "Of course, hyung." The edge of his smile turns sharp. For the team, Jiwoong reminds himself, and writes it off as a trick of the light.
ꔛ
Eight hours later the two of them will bump into each other in the dorm corridor, Jiwoong on his way to the washroom and Hao on his way back, and Jiwoong will know instantly that time has run out.
Patience is such a fickle little thing. Jiwoong has it in spades, but only when it comes to the things that don’t matter. Most things don’t matter in life, not the weather or what color shirt you’re wearing for the day or how long the line is at the coffee shop around the corner, but for the few things that do, Jiwoong has a bad habit of diving in headfirst without considering the ramifications.
He waits it out in the bathroom for as long as he can. If he can still hold it off then he can pretend that this isn’t something that matters, but perhaps patience goes in the opposite direction for Hao, because when he finally emerges after far too long, he’s still there in that corridor. He takes one look at Jiwoong, caught like a deer in headlights, and stalks closer, all the artful grace of a predator about to pounce. Jiwoong’s throat is suddenly too dry.
“Did you mean what you said during the live today?” Hao starts, the beginning of a smile pulling at his mouth. Jiwoong tries not to look at it. “About being the one to initiate when it comes to the two of us.”
The curve of his mouth is so smug. Jiwoong hates him so much. Jiwoong wants him so much.
“I did,” he replies, erring on the cautious side. He doesn’t know why he’s bothering. He knows what this is and Hao knows what this is and they both know what it will become. It’s only ever been an inevitability, because Jiwoong is patient but not even he can hold off the yawning chasm in his gut for two and a half years.
I’m friends with Hanbin, he considers saying, if that would change anything. It’s not kindness that compels him to say it, but rather because he thinks those are the cruelest words he can say to Hao right now, the only chance he has of this madness coming to an end. But he can’t imagine it would make a difference. He can already picture Hao’s answer anyways, why does that matter?
And if that isn’t the truth of it. Why does it? The reality is Hanbin looks at Hao, and Hao looks at Jiwoong. The bit he does not want to confront is that Jiwoong looks back, irrefutably, undeniably so. Jiwoong is friends with Hanbin, and Hanbin and Hao are not anything, and Hao is all up in his space and only coming closer. If Jiwoong says stop it’s not because he owes it to Hanbin, but because he owes it to himself.
Twist the statement. There are three words in this world enough to encompass everything else. It’s not the truth, not all of it, but he likes to think Hao will understand what he’s trying to say. I hate you. He tests the words in his mouth. It will not change anything. In every scenario he imagines where he’s brave enough to say them, Hao will reply in the same way, why does that matter?
Zhang Hao will hurt him. Zhang Hao already has. Zhang Hao will dig his heart out of his chest and wring all the blood from it before shoving it back in and stitching the wound close, no care in the world for if that kills Jiwoong or not, simply because he cannot stand the idea of it ever beating for somebody else.
They're nearly the same height, but when Hao leans closer he shrinks into himself, tucking his shoulders just under Jiwoong's, an apologetic pout at the mouth and mirth in his eyes. The motion presses Jiwoong back to wall, chest to chest, and it doesn't escape his notice that the new angle give him a view down the lithe arch of Hao's back, the jut of his ass, the sliver of skin at his waist from where his shirt’s been rucked up. Purposefully? Jiwoong wouldn't put it past him.
When Hao speaks, he's close enough that his lips brush against the underside of Jiwoong's chin. "Jiwoong-hyung." He pronounces the honorific not like a spear or like a sword, but like a more delicate weapon, a little throwing knife hidden under his sleeve, small enough to disguise as sweetness, sharp enough to gut a man. Jiwoong's not convinced. Animals only cede higher ground if they're submitting or if they're about to go for the throat, and he has a bad feeling he knows which option tonight's ending in.
“Tell me you don’t want this,” Hao says.
Jiwoong does not. Jiwoong cannot.
ꔛ
Fast forward to now.
Set the scene: midnight, the two of them in the darkness of the dorm corridor, hands and mouths and legs tangled, kissing like desperate teenagers two meters from the majority of their sleeping members.
It’s only been three or four hours since they introduced themselves as groupmates for the first time. First time meeting, first time in the same room, first day on the job, Zhang Hao has an uncanny ability to tear the word first into pieces and then set it on fire for good measure.
Jiwoong imagines this, this moment right here, cannot be any sort of first for Hao, with the experienced way his hands cross together behind Jiwoong’s neck and the tilt of his head and his mouth and his teeth and his tongue, but still—he wants.
It’s certainly not a first for Jiwoong. He’s been here before. He’s been here too many times. He’s never been here when it matters. And this doesn’t. It doesn’t matter, because if it does then he’s allowed himself to be made a fool out of, and Jiwoong may have lost this time but he still intends to win, damnit, and don’t let this be the final round don’t let this be the last don’t let this—
Hao’s thigh comes up between his, pressing so hard against the shape of his cock in his sweats that it almost hurts before his knee finds the wall and Jiwoong shifts his hips along until he gets them forward and aligned and fuck, fuck, god fucking help him, it’s nothing but a little friction, too dry and not at all enough and wasn’t he supposed to be the one in control here but fuck, it’s overwhelmingly good.
They’re way too old to be doing this. Jiwoong is twenty-four, what the absolute hell. He’s had better than this in a storage room closet during a shooting break in the middle of filming a scene where his character talks about how he can’t cook eggs. This is ridiculous. This is humiliating. This is warm and wet and it’s been too long and the pressure is so good and Hao whines when Jiwoong breaks off to bite at his bottom lip, harsh enough to be a warning but not sharp enough to break the skin, make him bleed the way they both want him to, sudden and violent and with consequences they’ll both come to regret in the morning.
Hao gets a hand around the back of Jiwoong’s head, straightening up so that he’s the one on top, knitting into his hair to pull at it. Jiwoong palms at his waist, his ass, drags him closer so he can rut against the smooth plane of his thigh better, frantic and uncoordinated and far too close for maybe five-ten-fifteen minutes of making out and a little frottage.
“Come on, come on,” Hao mutters his breath, looking unreasonably cross with himself. It’d be almost cute if Jiwoong didn’t hate him so much, or wanted to devour him whole, or wasn’t so preoccupied with getting himself off and he’s getting closer and closer and—
By his left, there’s the tell-tale click of a door down the hall, and Jiwoong’s yanked so abruptly back into reality he almost gasps before catching himself, scrabbling at Hao’s shoulders to shove him off. Hao doesn’t give, presses closer if anything, moving back in from where he’s been pushed off Jiwoong’s mouth to bite at the lobe of his ear. The collar of Jiwoong’s shirt feels wet from the mess of spit they’ve made of themselves, sliding past his jaw and all the way down his neck. It’s disgusting. It’s mortifying. It’s too good.
What the fuck are you doing, what the fuck are we doing? He tries to say, but the words garble into white noise in the back of his throat when Hao’s thigh comes back, rubbing against his cock more incessantly, and the thin cotton of his sweatpants is too scratchy and not enough and Jiwoong’s so close.
There’s a moment of silence, before the same door closes again. The sound of a lock follows. Jiwoong counts the rooms. Taerae, but that’s too close. Gyuvin and the maknaes are on the wrong side of this hallway. But two doors down on the left, that’s—
Oh, fuck, Jiwoong realises and remembers all in the same second, Hanbin, and that’s what pushes him over the edge, vision whiting out as Hao withdraws a hand, lightning quick, and promptly shoves the heel of his palm against the bulge of Jiwoong’s cock in his pants, still pulsing with the tail-end of his high, harsh and hard enough that it hurts for real this time. Jiwoong chokes, curses, then leans forward to bite at Hao’s mouth again before he gets the chance to laugh, sharp enough to make it count.
When he finally pulls off, both of them are breathing too heavily, a long string of saliva stretching between them from where they disconnected. Hao looks—he looks—frustrating well put together, his mouth red and swollen but otherwise unscathed, hair lying flat and eyes sparkling with something that could be desire or amusement or anything in between. Jiwoong tugs his head backwards once, enough that the strand of spit finally breaks, defeated when all it does is add to the mess that’s formed below his chin. Stifles another curse when Hao, goddamnit, sees an opportunity and goes for it, sticking his tongue out in a move so deliberate it can’t be blamed on instinct and leans right back in, licking a hot trail from Jiwoong’s jaw up to the corner of his mouth, where he presses a kiss, far too gentle and far too final for what they’d just done.
“Let’s have a good time, hyung.” Hao’s tone is cheery when he speaks, bright like the artificial white of filming set lights. Jiwoong would call it unaffected, if not for the irrefutable evidence digging into his hip, hot and heavy, but Hao removes himself like it doesn’t exist. The front of Jiwoong’s pants is already beginning to dry, and suddenly it’s gross in all the wrong ways. He kind of wants to throw up. “I look forward to getting closer to you.”
Motherfucker—
Zhang Hao gives him one last smile, mischievous and pleased, the pale line of his legs skipping down the hallway to slip back into his room without another word. Jiwoong watches him go.
Fuck, fuck.
ꔛ
On exponential increments: Jiwoong is familiar with them, a little too familiar.
It starts with resigning yourself to acting for the rest of your life, one minor role after another, then it’s kissing men on camera for a living and way too many uncomfortable promotional cycles of Instagram posts and lives and fanmeetings, and then all of a sudden it’s realising you don’t hate any of it as much as you thought you would, or maybe that’s just the part about kissing men. At least the pay was good, if that’s any consolation. Why would a second-rated badly written drama even warrant fanmeetings? Ironically, even after all he’s been through, this is the most publicity Jiwoong has gotten in his life up to that point.
The thing with Zhang Hao is much the same. How it goes from point A to point B in what seems like a matter of moments still leaves Jiwoong reeling, surprised that neither of them has broken their necks yet, from the speed or from finally giving into the urge to strangle each other. It starts with four bars of violin and a chance encounter in a room where they don't talk to each other, then all of a sudden it’s an arm around his neck and then it’s debut and this is where you think it can’t get any worse but then it turns into whatever the hell happened in the dorm corridor at midnight after their first broadcast and somehow Jiwoong knows that it won’t stop there, that it’s just going to keep exacerbating and spiraling out of his control. Or perhaps he never had any control over the whole clusterfuck in the first place.
So if it’s only downhill from here, what can Jiwoong do to make it even worse? You might have noticed by now, but when it comes to things that matter, the beating heart of the point, Jiwoong is incredibly good at shooting for it, missing entirely, and making things even messier for himself.
This leads to the only logical conclusion: a month later, Jiwoong will lose his mind, forget everything he’s learned about how you can’t fight a storm, and haul Hanbin in by the collar to kiss him the only way he knows how, hot and desperate. This is where the story derails, and proceeds to careen off into the wilderness with him hanging on for dear life, eyes closed, still waiting for the wreck to come.