Chapter Text
It's a blandly expensive restaurant, the kind that Jeonghan simply doesn't go to ever, in which Seungcheol decides to break the news. He would mind this less if Seungcheol still paid for it all every time they ate together, but that hasn't happened for over a year now, not since he and Suhyun got serious. He's never figured out if that was a deliberate move on Seungcheol's part, but it had utterly blindsided him the first time he'd casually asked the waiter at the very nice sushi place to split the bill evenly. He hadn't shown it, of course. He hadn't even whined about it. He's a better idol than that.
There's western food in front of him that he can't remember the ingredients of, and a phone under his nose with a picture of three different rings laid out on the marble countertop of Seungcheol's kitchen.
"It's kind of soon, isn't it?"
He doesn't mean to say it, it just sort of falls out, filter failing him in the moment. He picks at the dry skin on his elbow under the linen shirt he changed into after his meeting at the radio and then takes a swig of his beer.
Seungcheol's eyes dart suspiciously away. He scratches the top of his head, and his voice drops.
"I want to. I do, really, I've never seen a future like this with anyone. But there are also, uh… extenuating circumstances? That are putting us on a time crunch?"
For a brief moment, Jeonghan just blinks at him stupidly, trying to figure out what taxes or life insurance or visa issues Suhyun could possibly have, until a glaring red light goes off in his brain.
"Oh my god."
"Yeah."
"Holy shit."
"Yeah."
He doesn't look scared. Jeonghan thought he would look scared, but he doesn't, he's trying and failing to suppress the biggest grin, one hand over his mouth and the lines beside his eyes creased up in joy. Jeonghan swallows around a mouth dry as the Sahara. He takes another swig of his beer.
"How far along?"
"About four months. Maybe a little over?"
Twenty-eight weeks is, like, viable for premature extraction. It could survive. It's not just cells and intention, there's a whole living thing in Suhyun's belly, a whole baby. And Seungcheol is its dad.
"You're the first. I always thought maybe Shua, but— Oh, I mean, congratulations. Really, to both of you. How is she?"
"She's better than she was at the start—"
A series of memories from the last few months, of Suhyun missing social occasions, of Seungcheol saying she wasn't well, of her sticking stubbornly to soda that last promotion end dinner for Seungcheol's latest EP even though she can normally keep up with the worst of them. All the signs have been there. Jeonghan is a fucking idiot.
"— she got so sick, but she's much better now. I think she's starting to feel tired, and she wants salt all the time. Wait, really, Shua?"
Jeonghan shrugs.
"I always though they might move back to LA. They could get married there, have kids there. I know they both want that."
Seungcheol turns the idea over, nodding contemplatively. Jeonghan doesn't tell him that it's not merely intuition, that this is something they've been discussing for months, that they've been looking at house listings, that Joshua's partner David is actively making enquiries into possible openings in the universities over there. He doesn't tell him about the suggestion they made that he might join them for a while if they do.
Seungcheol waves the phone again, screen gone black now, and Jeonghan takes it before it drops in his weird french stew, but is caught off guard when it buzzes and denies him access after he keys in Seungcheol's passcode. He blinks at it for a second, and then thinks, and it takes two different combinations involving Suhyun's birthday before it grants him access and he can zoom in on each of the rings in turn. They're all expensive looking, but different styles. One has a singular, large diamond in a simple white gold band. It's very pretty, but Suhyun is a horticulturalist, and he doesn't think it would fit easily under a gardneing glove. The next has an arrangement of smaller diamonds forming a square, with more trailing down across the band. Beautiful, but erring on the side of gaudy. It doesn't match with any of the jewellery Jeonghan has ever seen her wear. The last one has a thicker band, styled like a braid, or a vine, dotted along with small twinkling diamonds and emeralds.
"Last one. Did Jihoon pick it?" Seungcheol seems to startle a little. "I'm guessing Kwannie picked that one, but it's too brash for Suhyunnie's tastes. And Shua's isn't practical. She'd have to take it off for work, it wouldn't fit under a glove."
"How do you know everything?" Seungcheol whines, taking his phone back.
It takes everything, every ounce of control inside Jeonghan not to laugh. The things he doesn't know, the things he didn't know, could've toppled countries. He scoops up some of his cooling stew instead. It's fine. The meat's a bit chewy, the sauce rich in that western, gravy-y way he doesn't really care for.
"I'm guessing the proposal won't be a surprise? And why didn't you ask me for help choosing?"
Seungcheol snorts into his water.
"The venues already booked, she's off organising the flowers as we speak. I've got a phone call with caterers after this. It's in three weeks, by the way, before she gets too big. Her words, not mine. I wouldn't care. Also, hell no. You would probably have told me to weave a ring out of grass and put that on her finger."
Jeonghan is struck, like a physical blow to the chest, by the image of Seungcheol kneeling in a field, slipping a grass-woven ring on his fourth finger. He nearly chokes on a mustard grain.
They attend to their food now the news is out of the way, already cooling on the plates, finishing it off before it gets cold. They split the bill. Jeonghan adds wedding and baby? to his shared work calendar, and turns his phone off before his manager can text him about it. They walk down the street towards where Seungcheol has parked his car, even though Jeonghan will have to turn and walk the other way to get to his own.
"Do you think I'll be a good dad?"
Seungcheol isn't looking at him while he says it, which is how Jeonghan knows it's important, and that he's honestly worried about it, looking for reassurance.
"Coups-yah. You're a great dad."
He doesn't even realise the slip until Seungcheol is turning to look at him, puzzled, and it's only the decade plus of idol experience that saves him.
"That thing's got limbs and a face and everything already. You're taking care of it, and its mum, and you'll keep doing so in the future. You're already its dad, and you're a great one. "
"That thing is my unborn child, you know," he scolds, but he's smiling again. "I'll see you at the wedding?"
"Of course you will." He would have assumed he'd see him earlier than that, there are at least two different events he had expected them both to attend between now and then, but three weeks is a short time to pull together an event like that, even with Choi Seungcheol levels of money. He'll probably be flat out busy until the ceremony. "Wouldn't miss it for the world."
When Seungcheol grips his elbow, Jeonghan only just manages to hide a wince. It's the bad one, which has been flaring up in recent months. Seungcheol would normally remember that, he thinks— or maybe that's just wishful thinking too, retrospective glasses with rose-coloured lenses.
"Drive carefully."
"Tell Suhyunnie congratulations, from me."
Jeonghan turns and walks to his car immediately, doesn't allow himself to linger and watch Seungcheol drive away from him. He's learning, you see, little ways to prevent his own heartbreaks.
His show doesn't start until ten, and they had an early dinner to fit around Seungcheol's schedule. He has plenty of time, theoretically, to go home and rest and make sure he's presentable rather than a sweaty mess when he turns up at the radio station. Instead, he drives out along the river, past the city boundary to one of the further parks. He gets an iced coffee and wanders along, slowly, trying not to exhaust himself in the midsummer heat. The coffee sweats into his hand as he sweats into his shirt, the nice one that shows off his neck and collarbone that he really needs to stop wearing when meeting Seungcheol, because his eyes don't drift down there anymore and Jeonghan is so, so tired of expecting things that he knows aren't going to happen.
There are people everywhere, walking under the shade of umbrellas and bucket hats, with gloves and second skin cover-ups. Jeonghan feels relatively unstifled in just a baseball cap and a mask. It doesn't matter if he tans, or if he gets burnt and blotchy, not right now. His little run of gigs in Japan is over, he's not scheduled for any filming any time soon. There's been no whisperings from any brands he's linked with of photoshoots for Autumn/Winter campaigns, and the fashion weeks aren't until next year. He doesn't even know if he'll be invited this time.
There's a pathetic attempt at a breeze drifting lazily in from the sea, and he tips his head to let it creep under his damp hair to his damp neck, just for a little relief. Maybe he should cut his hair, it's getting long again, curling under his chin and across the spiny knobs of his neck in the humidity.
He wanders for longer than he intends to, following the path of the river, lagging behind its swelling push out towards the Yellow Sea, before he checks the time on his phone and factors in the walk back and the drive back and the fact that dusk is falling quite rapidly down around him and turns abruptly on his heel.
He's not late to the radio. He's never been late to the radio. He breezes in half an hour before his show starts with drinks and snacks for the team, greeting the producers and engineers. They have a very brief recap meeting of the plan for the show— no guests today, and plenty of listener emails to guide conversation. It's not officially an advice show, more of a gentle chat about nonsense in the darker hours of the night, but fans and listeners have latched onto his habit of doling out advice and being willing to contemplate other people's problems. Jeonghan likes doing the radio. He's always wanted to be that person, an unchanging, non-moving island where people can come to rest a while before they row back out again. In the station and the job he's found a steady current to bring people to him when for a while it had seemed all the tides wanted to do was drift people away.
He natters his way through the broadcast, as he has all of them for the last ten months, responding to emails, inviting others to message in, fostering dialogue between the listeners. He loves that part the most, when he helps build a bridge between people who have never met and likely never will, but are moved to reach out into the ether and comfort or advise or joke with a stranger. He once refereed a weeks-long rivalry between two anonymous listeners over whether it was better to pour or dip the sauce for chicken, to the point where he knew both numbers off by heart and had given both a nickname, as they texted back in with more convincing evidence for their side of the argument. It went as far as to get several celebrity chefs involved to give their take on the matter. It had made him feel so alive, giggling as he egged them on, reading out the new messages each day in their assigned voices.
He was sad, when the station had organised a debate-settling special in which he and several guests tried both ways and agreed upon an answer. Not because it wasn't fun, it was a great show, but because it meant there was no more excuse for his anonymous friends to keep communicating with him, or with each other. Their numbers still appear in the lists of messages, on occasion, but not with anything substantial; only the polite continuance of an aquaintance that has served its purpose, nothing more.
Home isn't far from the station, technically walkable, but only if one can be bothered to navigate the streets and hills of Seoul at half past one in the morning, and Jeonghan has gotten too old for that. He also doesn't need the time anymore, the way he used to grab onto those minutes of open-air freedom between dorm and company, given the relative liberty of his life now. The drive takes less than ten minutes.
A surprisingly warm apartment greets him, given he had turned his aircon on remotely.
"Stop fucking with the aircon," he mutters into the space. "It's June and I'm sweaty."
There's no reply, obviously, but as he's pouring boiling water over a herbal tea bag after a (lukewarm) shower, there is the familiar whirr of the aircon opening and beginning to fan cool air through the warm mug of his home. His mouth quirks up.
"Thank you," he says to the kitchen tiles.
After his service, after Seungkwan had moved out, Jeonghan had managed to convince the landlord to sell him the place. He'd had to buy it cash, for a bit more than it was valued at, in order to persuade the old man, but it was worth it. Everyone had thought he was mad, but he likes it here. The neighbourhood is nice, he likes the restaurants that deliver, and, frankly, he would miss the girls.
Not infrequently, Jeonghan considers the reasons behind eking out an extra phantom existence, whether it's a choice or something foisted onto you, about the strength of a love able to bind people together through not just life but death too. He's never recieved an answer from any of the experts called in to ask who the house's extra inhabitants are, or why they stay there, other than the very basics: two women kept together by a love not fully realised in life. Perhaps, for them, one life simply wasn't enough. Perhaps they have rooted themselves there through sheer force of will, for fear that, if they were to move on to somewhere else, or another life, they might lose each other in the process. Perhaps, for them, a half existence together is better than a full one apart.
Whatever their reasons, Jeonghan feels responsible for them now; if this is their choice, he doesn't want them to be exorcised and forced away. He wants to help them stay together. Thus, his worst ever financial decision.
"Jeonghan," Seungkwan had said firmly, showing concern gently instead of being dramatic about it, which usually meant it was quite a big concern, "You cannot base property purchasing decisions on your ghostly lesbian roommates."
It was a little rich of Seungkwan, he had to admit. He had lived with him in said apartment with said ghostly lesbian roommates quite happily until his boyfriend had bought a place for the two of them on the riverside, ready for them to finish their service and embark on whatever counted as grown-up domestication for them. Hansol and his relentless, romantic practicality.
"Hmm," Jeonghan had hummed as he scanned through the surveyor's report on the property. There were things their landlord really should have sorted out by now. "Why not?"
"The place is old, and falling to bits, the boiler needs replacing, the walls need looked at, half the house needs rewiring and the bathroom is fucking ancient."
He hadn't been wrong, but also, his and Hansol's place had been a literal empty shell in a converted idustrial building when they bought it, that they had to do out at great cost, so. Pot, kettle. Jeonghan may not have a wildly successful variety and solo career, or a partner with music royalties pouring in, or even a partner with a second income at all, but he isn't exactly struggling.
"I'm rich. I'll pay someone."
"Well what if… they don't want you to?" Seungkwan tried stubbornly.
Jeonghan had waved a dismissive hand at that.
"I got a guy in to make sure. They're cool with it."
"You got a…" Seungkwan trailed off. Jeonghan hadn't been able to see him, but he could picture the resigned disappointment in his expression.
"I like it here, Seungkwan-ah," he had said gently. "This is my home, I've made it mine. I like my neighbourhood, and my neighbours, and yes, my dead roommates."
Seungkwan had looked at him for a while, bottom lip between his teeth.
"I'm just worried you'll get stuck here," he had told him frankly. "With the empty bedroom, and the ghosts."
Sometimes Jeonghan wonders if, when he dies, he'll join them in haunting the place, destined to live out his afterlife too as a third wheel, an outside spectator to love he cannot access.