Work Text:
like slipping on sunlight, we melt in softly
like flowers with open arms, your dreams go on and on.
— lucy, flowering
⁕
Sunghoon likes watching Sunoo do his hair in the mornings.
Sunoo puts his laser focus on everything he does. It means that when he stands there, still a little sleepy on his feet, fox eyes narrowed in concentration at their bathroom mirror, Sunghoon can’t help but think that he looks good. Real, but impossible.
Under their ivory bathroom lights, Sunoo’s hands are deft and soft. Sunghoon knows this from how he’ll sometimes run his fingers through Sunghoon’s hair and fix his bangs with an unexpected tenderness, and he watches as Sunoo worries his lower lip between his teeth, passes a curling iron over haphazard clumps and strands and lets them frame his face in gentle waves.
Kim Sunoo, age eighteen, smiles with both eyes in crescent moons. Every morning he puts on a dash of Peripera lip tint and flashes Sunghoon his brilliant red mouth, says, “You can go now, hyung.”
There’d been a time when Sunghoon hadn’t known what any of this meant. When Sunoo had said, I want to be close with hyung, voice fluttering behind him at the sink, and Sunghoon had felt struck dumb by his straightforwardness. Wondered, even, at a hidden meaning.
Sunoo is just nice, Sunghoon realizes now. Sunoo is a person who always looks out for others, and his friendliness is deeply contagious, and it doesn’t mean anything more than that.
Really, that might have been Sunghoon’s first problem.
Because he thinks he’s starting to wish that it did.
Three random facts you may or may not know about Park Sunghoon:
1. Park Sunghoon was born on December 8, 2002, on a winter-chilled and blustery snow day. He is currently nineteen years old, eighteen outside of Korea.
2. Park Sunghoon was voted “most likely to be introduced to your sister” by his members. Not by any small margin, either: by a veritable landslide. He first remembers being called pretty when he was fifteen, that time random girls started plastering his face on their Facebook pages and inscrutably coined him “figure skating-oppa,” claimed they wanted to date a boy like him.
3. Park Sunghoon is not an irrational person.
Once again. Fact 3: Park Sunghoon is not an irrational person.
You can forget his age, or that he’s from Seoul, or that he figure skated for ten years. You can forget that he gave up nearly everything he’d built for himself when I-Land opened up to him and showed him that there was a way out.
But, Fact 3. Don’t forget this.
So what does it mean when Sunoo squeezes his eyes and says Ddeonu like his life depends on it, and while Jongseong cringes and waves his hands around in despair, all Sunghoon can do is sit there with his awkward half-smile and think: oh, cute?
Sunghoon has always known, in vague dredges of his consciousness, watching Sunoo giggle to the camera without an ounce of shame, that this was true. That Sunoo was cute. Pretty, even.
But the way Sunghoon’s eyes linger. The played-up grimaces he affects afterward, the ones that feel far too concerted.
What does any of that mean?
When their Weverse interviews dropped and they all saw that Sunoo had said, I think hyung secretly finds me cute, Jungwon sat himself on one of their massive living room sofas and read it out loud like it was the funniest thing in the world.
Maybe that was the first sign.
The seven of them spend a lot of time in the living room in unspoken attempts at group socialization. Sunghoon hadn’t always been a person who was so easy to tease like that, but now he thinks it’s part of the job. Being around twenty other boys for months forces you to loosen up a little, and he’s realized along the way that there is no benefit to shielding yourself so tightly.
It’s caused, however, the unexpected side effect of being made fun of by a bunch of teenagers. One of whom is his leader.
“Remember when Sunghoon-hyung nearly lost his mind during Chamber 5?” Jungwon teases.
Beside him, Riki claps his hands and throws his head back, laughing goodnaturedly. “Aaaak!” he imitates in a shrill whisper. “Pyeonyuk!”
Sunghoon does, in fact, remember this. He might even remember too well. “Yah, why are you laughing?” he protests. “Is it funny? Why aren’t we making fun of Jongseong the first time he had to learn Chamber 5?”
From where he sits across him on the other sofa, Jongseong raises one naturally-furrowed eyebrow and fixes Sunghoon with a stare. “Uh, what? I really wasn’t that bad.”
“Wait,” Sunoo interjects suddenly, sounding incredibly smug. He sits up and cuts through the air with both arms. “Remember how you said I was your role model?”
That gets all of them laughing, even though Sunghoon fails to see why. And, well—maybe that had been another sign. Sunghoon is starting to realize, as these things keep spinning out of his control, that there have always been the flashing lights. The fluorescent green of a traffic sign. The things he took for granted.
Like how Sunghoon had first mistaken his reaction to Sunoo’s expressiveness as wanting to find a way to be like him—thought of it as nothing more than a seething envy for his effortlessness, wishing he also had a face he could morph into anything.
Well, he supposes now. The joke was on him.
“Sunghoon-ah,” Heeseung taunts next to him, jogging him from his thoughts. He aims a well-aimed nudge at his side. “Do aegyo for us!”
“Show us Ddunghoonie!” someone says, and Sunghoon is horrified to realize it was probably Sunoo.
Sunghoon just buries his head in his hands and groans.
The next day Sunoo and Sunghoon sit over the kitchen island and eat dinner together. Their arms run perpendicular, mirroring each other. Then Sunoo straightens up and says: “I feel like you’ve gotten more fun lately.”
“Huh?” Sunghoon asks, a little incredulous, unable to keep the offense out of his voice. “Was I really that much of a bore before?”
Sunoo gasps. “No! I mean, you were always cute. Like when you freaked out over the VR set.” He laughs. Sunghoon does not, but mainly because his head is still treacherously caught up on being called cute. “I mean, you had your moments and everything. But I think… hm, I think that you just look more comfortable these days? Maybe I’m starting to realize that we’re not so different after all.”
“I never thought we were that different,” Sunghoon admits.
“Really? I mean, aren’t our personality types pretty much exactly different?”
Opposites attract, he thinks, and then resolutely does not say.
“Having a different personality doesn’t make us completely different people, though, does it? I mean—we’re still doing the same things every day, right?”
“Right, that’s true,” Sunoo says agreeably. Then he grins at him. “But hyung, I never realized how much you laughed before. It’s nice.”
There’s something held taut in those words, and Sunghoon can feel it. An admission, maybe. His mouth starts making these complicated motions, like he’s trying to come up with a response to that. But before Sunghoon can tell him anything, before he can say something like, I’m just glad we made it, and, It feels easier to breathe these days, Jake bursts in from the hallway. He’s rubbing a towel over his soaking wet and overgrown brown hair, and the moment is instantly over.
That thought lingers on, though. Their differences, and then where they converge. I never realized how much you laughed before.
Sometimes, Sunghoon thinks that people don’t give Sunoo enough credit for the resilience of his character. Kim Sunoo is strong-willed to the bone; he is eager to give and give, and he is always the gentlest extrovert in the room, the one with the brightest voice.
But he also recognizes a wall when he sees one. Out of all of them, Sunoo is the first to know when not to climb.
Sunghoon especially remembers one time, turning a corner in the I-Land dorms and seeing him sitting against the wall with Daniel, arms akimbo over his tucked-in knees. He’d looked worn out and worse for wear, not the smiling Sunoo that he painted on every morning. His aegyosal was bruised and deepened by the lack of sleep.
“I don’t think they like me,” Sunghoon remembers him saying. “We’re never going to fit in here.”
(I-Land, for all that it aimed to forge organic bonds between the trainees, to see who could share the easiest chemistry inside this cutthroat, high-pressure, fucked up system, was still victim to the usual teenage boy politics.)
“People do like you, hyung,” Daniel had said. He was fifteen and sweet like that, no edge to that gangly body of his. “How can they not?”
But Sunoo had always had a deep awareness for the people who didn’t care about him. If a wall is only going to get in your way, then turn back; walk down another path. Don't try to find a rope to throw over it. Don't try to punch a hole through brick and concrete and pull your fist back to see the skin scraped over.
It's one of the first things Sunghoon noticed about him. Even back then, when he still hadn't understood the person Sunoo was—thought, vaguely, that he was cute—he noticed this. How Sunoo was friendly and showered people he loved with sweet hugs and cheek kisses, slept side by side with Riki when the younger boy had nightmares. But if he didn't like you, then, well… it was obvious.
The thing is that Sunoo doesn't need anybody. He likes people because they’re fun to be around, because he is an extrovert before anything. Because he is kind. In that I-Land dorm, he didn't play politics like anyone else.
“We only have ourselves,” Sunoo had said then, as if realizing it for the first time. “Who else is going to look out for us?”
So now, when Sunoo tells him that he’s loosened up, that they’re not so different after all—Sunghoon thinks the first admission reflects on Sunoo, too. Sunoo who curls up in his bunk bed and flails his arms out, no longer weighed down by the constant surveillance, who twirls around in the living room without a care in the world. Sunoo who, against all odds, lets Sunghoon look out for him.
Something warm is unfurling in the pit of his chest. Something feeling and real, something tender to the touch.
There are actually a lot of things Sunghoon likes about Sunoo. Things he wouldn’t have thought to notice at first, before they’d moved into this dorm and found all the spaces between the seven of them growing sparser.
Take, for example: Sunoo wears the same cheap makeup every high schooler has, the Peripera tints and 15k won BB cushions. He stands in front of the mirror and presses one slender palm against the side of his cheek every morning, eyes himself appreciatively and makes this cute little noise in the back of his throat. But what Sunghoon likes about Sunoo is that he also buys soft, unexpectedly expensive fragrances. He likes the delicate scents that don’t linger too long, and wherever he goes he leaves a faint touch of grapefruit behind.
Or, also impossible to forget: all the things that happen during the fugue-like state that is Given-Taken promotions. At their debut showcase recording a staff member pulls them aside, asks them sheepishly if they know that the fans call them the Kungyas, and then has them imitate a comic strip. Sunghoon finds the whole ordeal a little humiliating at first, but then he remembers that it’s also kind of, like, his job. Sunoo takes to these aspects of idolhood easier. Sunghoon doesn’t find the role model admission exaggerated, after all.
Because Sunoo always runs cold, there’s also the time when he lies down on the waiting room sofa before their early-morning Music Bank rehearsal and huddles next to Sunghoon in his long padding, the one that runs all the way down his skinny legs, trying desperately to leech off his body heat.
They don’t win anything, but they’re reassured that they’re doing great anyway. It’s just a bad time for debuts, they say, and Sunghoon can’t bring himself to care that much. The song and the album and the M COUNTDOWN Hot Debut Stage! title, being Park Sunghoon of ENHYPEN, are enough for him right now.
At one of their appearances for Naver Now, a radio host asks Sunoo, “You said you wanted to get closer to Sunghoon because he was handsome. Weren’t you worried that standing next to him would make you look bad?”
Sunoo just gasps, wordless for a split second. Then he says, “I never thought about it like that.”
Sunghoon likes him for that, too. How it had been an objectively ridiculous thing to ask, but Sunoo had just laughed like it truly could have never crossed his mind. Even if he didn’t tell Sunghoon sweet words like this at the dorms, it was nice to hear every once in a while. That Sunoo looked at him and saw someone easy to compliment.
In the living room later on, after a long and grueling night practice, Sunoo plots down next to him with a heavy sigh. It’s one of the first nights Sunghoon feels that the dam between them has finally cracked. But it’s only that beginning split, the first spill before the floodgates open.
“Hyung dances prettily. It’s so satisfying to watch,” Sunoo admits.
His voice sounds unusually heavy, and Sunghoon hangs his head down to look at his hands. With one thumb he kneads restlessly at the flesh of his left palm, considering. “Thanks? It’s just my figure skating training.”
“You’re lucky, though. When I first became a trainee… one of the dance trainers got mad at me and called me sloppy. Said I had to stop dancing like I was in a high school cover group.”
“What?” Sunghoon asks incredulously. “No way.”
“I guess you never had to worry about stuff like that, right? It must have been pretty easy for you to switch to dancing.” It’s not bitter this time. Just accepting, a little defeated.
Sunghoon can’t help but bark out a laugh. “Oh, trust me. I was a total loser when I joined Bighit. I barely had any friends in the company and I couldn’t sing at all. The vocal trainers called me hopeless. But your voice has always been pretty, hasn’t it?”
“Oh,” Sunoo breathes out. “I mean—thank you.”
Sunoo likes being called pretty like that. Without any pretense, just as an objective assessment, even if indirectly. Sunghoon can’t help but watch the way he preens just a little, wondering to himself why the image captivates him so much.
The day they head to the studio to shoot their Weverse interviews, Sunoo turns toward him in the company car and shoots him a knowing look.
“Sunghoon-hyung knows all about being interviewed, doesn’t he?” Sunoo teases. Riki snorts, clearly in on the joke.
“Huh?”
“We read your old skating interview,” Sunoo eggs him on. “‘I like hip-hop and my hobbies are building Gundams—’”
“What, where did you even see that?”
“Uh, someone uploaded it on Weverse. Hyung, you really said you were going to find a pretty girlfriend in college?” He throws his head back and laughs. “As expected, athletes are different!”
“Okay, stop,” Sunghoon sighs, but there's no bite to his voice, and he knows he just sounds embarrassed. “I was like, seventeen!”
The thing is, the earnest truth of it is: he knows that his life has never been normal.
Sunghoon spent ten years etching skate marks into the cold slate of an ice rink in Seoul, and every morning at 4am it was the same thing: freezing water splashed onto a face filled with misplaced determination. Warming up in the locker room, stretching his legs out over a foam roller, telling himself, I don’t really want to do this, but doing it anyway. He remembers holding a gold medal in his teeth and thinking he could still make it all worthwhile.
In the end, he was never going to be good enough.
He remembers that interview. Being asked about the Olympics when he was too young to qualify. Two years later he was in Bighit, and he was still only ranked 7th, and there was no reason to dream further.
Fact 3: Park Sunghoon is not an irrational person. For all the tears he fought back in the name of professionalism, Sunghoon was only ever going to be good, full stop. The kind of good that impressed, sure—especially those around him who didn’t really get figure skating, who could barely stand on two skates to begin with—but ultimately, the kind of good that didn’t matter.
Sunghoon had always liked the idea of succeeding on his own terms, though. He liked the idea of attaining something through sheer willpower and talent alone, and more than anyone he knew, Sunghoon believed in the results speaking for themselves. It was what made him get up every time he hit the ice trying to land a triple axel, every time his palms smacked down when he was seven, then ten, then fifteen, telling himself figure skating was worth fighting for.
It’s why Sunghoon had never planned for more beyond Bighit and I-Land. Why there’d been Park Sunghoon in the practice rooms, too reticent to get close to most trainees, the instructors shocked that he and someone as loud and shameless as Jongseong hung out. Then another Park Sunghoon, the one who sacrificed his mornings for a waning dream, and then Park Sunghoon, perpetual number 5, gritting his teeth through a road his mom hadn’t been convinced made sense.
Then, finally: the Park Sunghoon in his third year of high school, a member of Belift Lab’s first K-pop group. ENHYPEN.
“You’ve worked hard,” his mom told him over the phone, and then she said—even though they both knew he couldn’t, that idol life wasn’t any easier—“I hope you can rest for a bit.”
Back then, all he’d had was the struggle. Now Sunghoon faces something that can actually last, and all he is thinking is: What next?
Now Sunghoon has a bratty teenage sister who tells him that his album is kind of lame, and that boy groups are so boring these days, even though she brags to all her middle school friends that her older brother has become an idol. His parents gave up everything they had to cycle him back and forth between international competitions and Bighit’s expansive practice rooms, and in 2020 he lives in Gangnam with only his bandmates and the manager next door. These six boys in their unexpectedly luxurious apartment dorm, whom he has been placed on the same path with for the foreseeable future.
Our team is like a family, Sunghoon says, even though the idea is a little laughable. Still too raw and awkward, in the way new shirts are before the first wash, wrinkled in all the places that can’t be smoothed over.
What Sunghoon really means to say is: he’d spent eighteen years building himself to be one person. Now he’s nineteen, and he realizes he doesn’t actually know who that person is.
Sunghoon doesn’t know anything, really. It feels like there’s something he needs to figure out about himself before he spins out and falls, before he lets the thread holding himself together unravel any further. Sunghoon takes a long, hard look at Sunoo, at this dorm, at Jongseong who cooks for them at 2am, and Riki who curls up under Sunoo’s sheets at night, and Jungwon who carries himself with a maturity he hadn’t known possible at seventeen. Jake who watches dog videos with him in his bed, his closest friend, the only person who really sees him without judgment, and Heeseung who gathers everything he has in him to affect a palatable mathyung image, who had been so wound tight until they’d finally taken pity on him and eased the weight of leader responsibility off his overburdened shoulders. All seven of them metaphorically bleeding out on the practice room floor, trying to prove that their group wasn’t just cobbled together. That they fit as these seven, that no other combination would do.
Whatever it is, Sunghoon desperately wishes he knew.
The core of skating is about balance. Knowing to even yourself out, to keep your hand from reaching out and touching the ice. Even that split second of doubt, that minuscule transfer of weight, says enough.
It’s like holding a jug filled to the brim and trying to keep anything from spilling over. The moment the water sloshes over and hits the ground, you are left with less of what you had before: a smaller purpose, a smaller image. The performance has already been tarnished, and there is no way to reverse the spill.
But, at the same time: the jug becomes lighter. It weighs down on you less.
Learning to fall, Sunghoon is starting to learn, is about that. About shedding tempestuous fears and letting people catch you.
He hadn’t known how to do that before. You’ve gotten more fun, lately, Sunoo’s voice rings in his head.
During dance practices, he and Riki run the hottest. Riki is too good; Sunghoon is too disciplined. All seven of them fit together in their own way, but there are still differences, and the experience gap glares the harshest in their most sleep-deprived moments. Here between these black Belift practice walls, their worn-through sneakers skidding across vinyl, Sunghoon tries his best to be agreeable.
But, also. Fact 3.
“Guys!” he’ll snap as forcefully as possible, waiting for the ruckus to quiet down, for people to turn their sheepish eyes on him. Jungwon will shoot him a grateful look, the I still don’t know how I’m supposed to yell at people older than me? look. “Let’s focus.”
There are better moments, though. In their dorm room he and Jake lie down on that bottom bunk while Jake laughs at anything and everything with all of his chest, and Sunghoon likes to see how much a person can understand him. Heeseung spends the first few weeks in the dorms trying to have candid conversations with all of them, says things like, Well, now that I’m the oldest, I should understand you guys better, right? And even though it’s awkward Sunghoon thinks that he’s glad to have a person like that. Someone as selflessly thoughtful and sacrificial as Lee Heeseung.
Sometimes, too, he and Sunoo get ready together in the mornings. They stand side by side in the bathroom, Sunghoon brushing his teeth while Sunoo rinses his face, long bangs held back by a fluffy headband. Their shoulders bump against each other periodically, and Sunghoon can nearly feel the heat through the shirt material. The way Sunoo’s presence is warm and solid, even in all of its ephemeral touch.
One time Sunoo casually checks him out and comments, “Your eyebrows are pretty attractive,” like it’s nothing. It takes everything Sunghoon has to not choke on his toothpaste.
“What,” he splutters.
Sunoo blinks at him. Sunghoon watches his face shift into a bemused frown through their hazy reflections, that soft layer of morning-shower condensation frosting their mirror. “What? Has no one ever told you that? You know, like—from a beauty standpoint. You have nice eyebrows.”
“Right. Of course,” Sunghoon says, and then feels vaguely embarrassed at his overreaction. He sticks his toothbrush back into his mouth and starts brushing with a ferocity he didn’t know he possessed.
“Hyung, is everything okay?” Sunoo asks liltingly. He leans a little into Sunghoon as he speaks, and, oh god, their shoulders are so close together. “Anything you need to talk about?”
Sunghoon shakes himself, then leans down to rinse his mouth out. He feels completely taken out of context, caught off-guard.
“I’m totally fine. What were we talking about?”
Sunghoon doesn’t know anything, which is why it takes him so long to realize.
There is no way he can just Naver search why do i think my bandmate is kind of cute, is that normal? He’d dated a girl in middle school, another figure skater he’d met during practice. Sunghoon remembers liking her, how she’d been pretty and they’d held hands and kissed exactly once, and then she broke up with him over a single KKT message.
He does like girls, he knows. That part is easy enough.
But he also likes the red of Sunoo’s lip tint, and he likes how Sunoo can switch between expressions with such ease, and how he says, “Aren’t I your role model, hyung?” And he thinks Jake is cute, sure, but the feeling doesn’t bubble to the surface as quickly. It isn’t something deep and visceral, churning incessantly in his gut.
Maybe he’s always been partial to the way other boys looked, thought they were cute and wanted to get closer to them in ways that made no sense. But outside of figure skating, Sunghoon had spent eighteen years carefully fashioning himself into the skin of a typical teenage boy—whatever that meant—and there had never been room for this. He listened to SMTM songs with his friends and talked about female idols, said he liked girls who looked like Irene and Suzy, even though he didn’t know any like that his age and wasn’t even sure they existed. Sunghoon had never let himself look further. Just let whatever this all was fester underneath, trapped under a thick sheet of ice, sealed away and promptly forgotten.
Sunoo isn’t like any of his middle school friends. Kim Sunoo, age eighteen, born to be an idol, a performer, an entertainer, burns through every single layer. He doesn’t care who looks at him or what they have to say, and even if he does he makes sure it never changes him.
It doesn’t have to be so complicated, Sunghoon realizes. Suddenly he knows what all of this means. From the beginning of I-Land, back at the sink, to all the moments in front of the bathroom mirror, watching Sunoo through newly-opened eyes, realizing that something had shifted along this tedious crawl of an anticipatory autumn.
So: he knows what it means. He just doesn’t know what he’s supposed to do with it.
“Ah,” Sunghoon says. “Well, fuck.”
As with most of his problems, Sunghoon goes to Jake.
Actually, this is a lie. Sunghoon usually goes to Jongseong with his problems, but he thinks Jake is better trusted with interpersonal matters, because he usually smiles at everything and tells Sunghoon that whatever he feels is right. Jongseong just tries to get him to deal with his problems.
(You might be asking yourself: but what about Fact 3? Surely Park Sunghoon, a man of discipline, would be willing to deal with something so trivial, so silly, so deeply inconsequential?)
(It’s always been Sunoo, is the thing.)
“Do you ever feel like… Sunoo is kind of cute?”
“This is what you called an emergency meeting for?” Jake questions.
“Uh. Yeah?”
“Okay, that’s fine. I was just making sure. So, question 2: why exactly is this an emergency meeting?”
Sunghoon takes in a deep breath. “Well, I’ve been thinking lately. Like, you know how… you know. Some of us are guys, and we only like—we like girls, right? But, well. I guess I started to realize that I… fuck, sorry. Give me a second.”
“Take your time,” Jake says. His eyebrows are furrowed, but not in a bad way, just that gentle concern he always carries with him.
“Some of us only like girls, right? But—I think—you know, I mean, Sunoo, we—”
“Sunghoon-ah,” Jake interrupts. His fingers pin Sunghoon’s wrist down, and it’s only then that he realizes he’d been waving a hand around, frantically trying to make sense of the words in his head. Why is it so embarrassing to say out loud? Why has he never actually had to say something like this to anyone before, not even to himself? “Are you trying to tell me that you have a crush on Sunoo?”
Well. Spoken so clearly, it surely couldn’t be anything else. “Is it obvious?”
Jake laughs. “Not until thirty seconds ago, no. Amazing. Until now, I genuinely believed you were the most subtle person alive.”
Sunghoon scoffs. Secretly, though, he’s pleased by the lack of response. The way something like this can already be commented on with such ease.
“It’s not a big deal, right?” he says, trailing off and gesturing vaguely. “That I’m… you know.”
“I’m from Australia,” Jake says, smiling as if this should tell him everything.
“Yeah,” Sunghoon sighs. He’s never actually known what that was supposed to mean, but Jake seems to use it as a catchall for any situation he finds even mildly uncomfortable. “I know you are.”
Jake takes one look at his defeated expression and barks out a laugh. “Sunghoon-ah, of course it’s okay. Do you, uh… want to say it?”
“What? You mean... that I’m bi?”
“Yeah,” Jake confirms, still so serene and pleasant, and Sunghoon’s chest thumps with immeasurable relief. Jake’s huge puppy smile never breaks. He just leans forward and wraps his arms around Sunghoon, squeezes tight, buries his face in the crook of his shoulder. “Thanks for telling me,” he says, voice muffling against the fabric of Sunghoon’s pajama shirt.
“Yeah, of course,” Sunghoon responds. Then Jake leans back out, hands still holding onto either side of Sunghoon’s shoulders, and he grins a little crookedly.
“But thinking about it, isn’t it a good thing you like Sunoo?” he muses. “At least he’s gay.”
It’s said so breezily that Sunghoon knows, right away, that Jake has no idea what kind of bomb he’s dropped on him. Like, what? At least he’s gay?
If Sunghoon were a person with more self-awareness, he would probably see why a statement like that were presumptuous and misplaced. How it was like saying, isn’t it good that you like literally any girl who’s straight? Doesn’t it mean she has to like you back? How even for all of his good intentions, a person as kind and well-meaning as Jake could still misunderstand.
But Sunghoon doesn’t know anything. Like, literally anything. So instead he stares at him, shocked, and says, “What? He is?”
“Uh.” Jake opens his mouth, wordless, before closing it with a snap. At first he looks at Sunghoon incredulously, like only a (lovesick, newly-awakened bisexual) idiot would suggest otherwise. But then his face shifts again, as if realizing something of tremendous gravity. “I mean—well,” he tries, looking increasingly flustered. “I mean—you know—of course it’s not good to assume. I guess I just thought… You’d really just have to ask him yourself!”
His mouth forms such a deep and awkward line that Sunghoon, who doesn’t understand what had warranted such a reaction in the first place, almost feels bad for asking.
“Huh,” he says, fascinated.
Again: more self-awareness.
Maybe Sunghoon isn’t very good at reading people.
Sunoo, is it true that you’re gay?
Sunoo, I kind of like you. Do you want to try kissing?
Sunoo, you’re cute, and it makes me feel crazy, and isn’t that just so funny? That I can’t stop thinking about this, and you’d laugh at me if you knew?
After the fiasco with Jake, Sunghoon has devised his own mental exercise to avoid any further mishaps. It mostly involves him running extremely humiliating scenarios through his head first, so he can imagine how stupid he’d sound saying this shit out loud. It isn’t going very well.
If he thinks about it, it would make sense if Sunoo did like guys. Or at least, it makes sense that Jake would assume as much. Sunghoon had never thought about these things before, and now it’s like a veil has been blasted off, and he’s realizing that everything he once accepted as impractical, as irresponsible, is just as much a part of him, too.
He doesn’t even mean to, but he finds himself appealing to Sunoo more these days. He tugs on the scarf Sunoo had given him for his birthday just a little tighter, tells Sunoo that he looks nice in the morning. On their way out of the dorms, Sunoo will turn to him and say, “Hyung, you’re still wearing the scarf I got you, right?”
He glows with quiet satisfaction whenever he catches the checkered fabric draped over Sunghoon’s arm, and it’s like there’s something warm that keeps exploding in Sunghoon’s chest. Over and over again, a series of neverending fireworks spelling out his pathetic confession for the whole world to see. To anyone else, Sunoo asking that would look like him seeking approval, making sure that Sunghoon liked something he spent time and money on.
But Sunghoon understands what it really means: that Sunoo likes him enough to affirm his opinions. In this scenario, Sunghoon is the sunflower turning into Sunoo’s light, begging his affections. Sunghoon keeps looking, and looking, and sometimes he thinks he catches Sunoo’s stare on his back, that brilliant hazel trapped in his furtive gazes. Something keeps simmering. Everything in Sunoo’s orbit is hot to the touch, and he wants to melt in it.
And if Sunghoon said—
If he said…?
“Sunoo, I like you.”
They’re pressed up against the sofa when it happens, just the two of them. The other members are in various spots of the dorm, or outside on a convenience store run, and no one is paying any attention to them in their boring, isolated corner. Sunghoon has been holding these words in for so long, turning them over and over until they were seared into his memory.
Sunoo stops scrolling through his phone and sets it down on the ground with a dull thud.
“What, hyung?” he asks quizzically. “What’s this about suddenly? You know I like you, too.”
“Sorry, I mean. Sunoo-yah, hyung likes you as a guy.”
For a couple of seconds, Sunoo just stares at him. Sunghoon can feel his heartbeat threatening to leap out of his chest, but Sunoo just sits there. Like he’s trying to gauge the sincerity in his voice, trying to understand if this is really the thing that’s been building this entire time—if Sunghoon is really putting it all out there, finally, letting it unfurl.
Sunoo’s face cracks into a grin. It’s blinding.
“Hyung,” he breathes, “you’re seriously so cute. You look all serious half the time but you’re just cute, aren’t you? Why do you look like you’re marching to your death?” He giggles to himself, reaching out to take hold of Sunghoon’s hand. “I like you, too, you idiot.”
“Really?”
“Honestly, I thought you were straight at first. But I guess anyone who figure skates for ten years can’t be completely straight.”
“Uh, it’s kind of a new thing. Also, what? Most of the guys I know are,” Sunghoon protests, although recently he’s been realizing that his metric on these things isn’t particularly reliable. “Or, I guess… they definitely wouldn’t say if they weren’t. Figure skating is a surprisingly macho sport in professional competition.”
Sunoo rolls his eyes. “I was joking. This is what gay people do. We get to joke about things like this.”
“Oh, uh.” Sunghoon nods. “I’m bi, actually.”
“That’s cool,” Sunoo says with a small smile. He pats his shoulder at the same time, and Sunghoon is once again reminded that he knows nothing. “Don’t worry, hyung. We’ll get you there.”
Then he presses just one kiss to his cheek, a featherlight thing. Out in the hallway, Riki bangs open the bathroom door and causes Sunghoon to reluctantly pull his hands back, straightening himself up. But Sunoo looks at him like they’re sharing the only secret in the world, and it runs a thrill through his entire body.
Sunoo is great at being irrational, too.
One time Sunghoon tells him that he’s cute and Sunoo just crosses his arms at him. Purses his lips downward, says, “But Jake-hyung is still your favorite, right?”
Sunghoon laughs. “Why are you pouting? You’d say Niki were your favorite if someone asked, right?”
“Are you forgetting that Niki is sixteen years old?” Sunoo retorts. “He’s a cute puppy you can’t help but pet when he sleeps in your bed! Jake-hyung is…” He seems to realize his faux pas right as Sunghoon smiles at him, an awful mix of smug and endeared. “Well! He’s also a bit of a puppy, but it’s different! He’s your overgrown puppy who doesn’t know that he isn’t a baby anymore, and—fine. This analogy isn’t going anywhere. But you know exactly what I mean.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Sunghoon says, even though he isn’t sure he does. Sunghoon doesn’t feel most emotions strongly, and it’s something Sunoo both admires in him and occasionally despairs over.
When they had to take an MBTI test for I-Land, Sunghoon remembers messaging his sister his results. She’d told him, ugh, of course you’re an istj. that’s so you, which kind of felt like an insult, but maybe it was just because his sister is fourteen and teenage girls have extremely convincing opinions about things like that.
This is all to say: what Sunoo doesn’t know is that he’s the only person who can make Sunghoon irrational. Park “of course you’re an ISTJ” Sunghoon, the Sunghoon who is Jungwon’s right-hand man and Enhypen’s unflappable ice prince, the Sunghoon forced in as the last piece to Chamber 5 by Sunoo—the boy resisting the urge to scream into a package of pre-sliced pork in the I-Land dorms because of it, being asked, “why are you like this?”
Out of all of those Sunghoons, it’s always been because of Sunoo.
“Well, I promise you you have nothing to worry about,” Sunghoon tells him with conviction. “It’s just you.”
Sunoo flushes a little bit at that. Sunoo has to resist the urge to reach out a hand and hold the soft skin of his cheek, lean in a little closer.
“Have you ever kissed a guy before?” he blurts out.
And—for all that Sunoo seems confident in his attraction, in the core of who he is, he flusters extremely easily at questions like this. Sunoo makes a noise somewhere between a squeal and a scream, bowling right into Sunghoon’s side. Sunghoon startles and holds his arms out to steady him, trying and failing to catch Sunoo’s eyes.
“What? Was I not supposed to ask that?”
Sunoo groans, but he pulls away to sit back up. He shakes his bangs back into place and feels at his cheeks for their temperature, and Sunghoon grins crookedly at all of his particular habits. “No, it’s fine. You can. I’ve just, uh, never had a boyfriend before.”
“That’s okay,” Sunghoon laughs. “I mean, neither have I?”
“It’s just embarrassing,” Sunoo says. “I’ve never kissed anyone at all and now I have a cute boy sitting in front of me and you’re asking if I’ve ever kissed a guy? Hyung.”
“Well, do you want to kiss me?”
Sunoo draws in a sharp breath. He says nothing for a moment, wide eyes flitting left and right, pondering.
Then, just as the silence has stretched on a moment too long, Sunghoon feels them: fingers lingering on the skin of his knee. A palm pressed against rumpled fabric, hesitant.
He reaches forward as well. Sunoo’s hair is just as soft as his hands, Sunghoon tells himself distractedly.
Closer still. Closer—closer, and then he thinks about nothing at all.
“Sunoo-yah.”
“Mmm?” Sunoo mumbles.
They’re lying down on Sunoo’s bunk bed, tucked into each other’s side. Sunoo has his arm thrown over the flat expanse of Sunghoon’s stomach and his cheek smushed against his chest. He looks impossibly sweet like this, face bare, only the slightest shade pink from a natural flush. His hair, unstyled, falls around him like a halo.
“Back then,” Sunghoon starts. He takes Sunoo’s hand, the one barely hanging off and tickling at his side, and plays absentmindedly with his fingers. “Back then during I-Land. When you kept saying my name, and said you wanted to be close with me.”
“Yeah?”
“Did you have a crush on me?”
Sunoo raises his upper body just so he can wrench his hand out and slap at Sunghoon’s chest, before lying back down to grab at his fingers again. “What the hell, hyung! Do you want me to say yes?”
“Why are you hitting me? No, I mean—I was just wondering. I don’t know. I’ve realized lately that I’m kind of bad at reading people, apparently.”
Sunoo giggles this time, the sound vibrating against his skin. “Okay, true. But I didn’t. I just thought you were cute.”
“Yeah?”
“Is that so surprising? I like cute people.”
Sunghoon likes it, that Sunoo can be straightforward about these things. Sunoo is capable of obfuscating his truths when he wants to; he can be sly or coy, calculated. But here under the low-hanging top bunk, their bodies pressed together and shoulders touching, Sunoo doesn’t shroud anything at all.
“I also like cute people,” Sunghoon says meaningfully. Sunoo shifts around and looks up at him, and they lock eyes, and then he turns his face away to snort.
“You’d better,” he says.
Sunghoon spent so long not understanding anything at all. He could barely figure out who he was supposed to be himself, the kind of man to fashion himself into, let alone the kind of person Sunoo wanted. Kim Sunoo, on the other hand, has never needed anybody at all. He forged his way through I-Land on sheer charm alone, and he doesn’t need Sunghoon to orbit him, to appeal to him.
But he does want him. Sunoo wants him like this, plain and simple, and he likes the Sunghoon without pretense, the irrationalities of his character, the parts he’s never been able to stamp out.
Fact 4: There’s a faint note of grapefruit by the pillow. Park Sunghoon feels crazy with all of the things he likes about him.