Archive of Our Own ^beta

Seungkwan gets the text in the group chat.

It's the first message in there since three weeks ago, when Mingyu sent a picture of his belated birthday dinner with the hip-hop team — although, Seungkwan supposes he shouldn't call them that anymore. He stares at the four of them again now. Vernon, tucked into the back of the frame, smiles with closed lips at the camera.

Following the picture are a smattering of messages — birthday wishes, apologies for not being in the country to celebrate, fond recollections of other celebrations they'd had together. Soonyoung sent a series of stickers from a new tiger-themed sticker pack, one that Seungkwan hasn't seen before. He wonders if it's really that new, or if he just hasn't heard from Soonyoung in a while. He hasn't heard from most of them in a while, hasn't reached out to any of them in even longer.

The group chat sits in a state of limbo now, not quite active but not quite dormant either. There are flurries of activity, but there are also periods—

Three weeks of silence—

— before a single text, from Seungcheol.

Reunion dinner. Last Saturday of the month. 7pm.

Messages start popping into the chat. Seokmin with a sticker of a puppy holding up a heart made of flowers, Jihoon with a simple thumbs up, Jeonghan with a rant about how people need to give him more advance notice before making plans. Seungkwan taps to bring up the keyboard, but when he goes to start typing, his mind goes blank. His thumbs hover over the screen.

A reply from Vernon blinks into existence.

I'll be there.

Seungkwan closes the chat and slips his phone back into his pocket.

When their first seven-year contract ran out, Seungkwan was the one who spearheaded the renewal process. He wanted seven more years. Some of the others wanted less — two years, three. It showed an absurd lack of faith in the longevity of their team, which had been upsetting at the time, but with time and a lot of cajoling from the members, Seungkwan had gotten over it.

Five more years, they'd agreed, finally. Five years and a rolling option to extend by one more year. Seungkwan could accept that, and anyway he figured that once the five years were up he'd just keep convincing them to roll over for another year. Just one more year, he'd say, and they'd all agree to it, because what was one year in the grand scheme of their lives? 

But as the years passed it became increasingly clear that the visions each of them had for their lives were diverging, thirteen loose threads on the frayed edge of a tapestry — the more Seungkwan fiddled with each thread, trying to knot them back into the whole, the more they just unravelled. Between military service and solo projects and other random pursuits unrelated to the entertainment industry— 

They stayed together for thirteen years, in the end. Thirteen. There's a sort of poetry to that. 

There would have been more poetry, Seungkwan thinks, if they'd stayed together forever.

Chan texts him the following day. The message comes through when Seungkwan's in the studio, recording an OST for a new drama, and he only sees it hours later. 

Let's have dinner tonight, the message reads. 

Seungkwan isn't a fool. He knows why Chan is reaching out. But he's spent all afternoon singing about the unfailing optimism of youth, and maybe he wants to pretend he still has some of that inside him. So he agrees and tells his manager — his own manager now, not one of a pool shared amongst thirteen — to drive him from the studio to the barbecue restaurant Chan's picked.

"Alright, tell me the truth," Seungkwan says, once they've ordered their food and been left alone in their private room, "who sent you?"

Chan makes a face. "No one," he says, but he sounds far too indignant for this to be true. Seungkwan lifts his eyebrows and tilts his head, waiting. Chan rolls his eyes. "Okay, fine — Jeonghan-hyung may have gently suggested that I check in with you. But I was gonna do that anyway!" 

"Jeonghan-hyung should mind his own business." 

"He just cares about you," Chan replies. There had always been signs of it along the way, but ever since the team broke up, Chan has become Jeonghan's most strident defender. "We all do."

It was comforting, when they were all still together, seeing how their dynamics shifted over time. How relationships could ebb and flow, and yet remain held steadily in place by the intricate web of bonds that tied all thirteen of them together. Now, their dynamics are still shifting, but in a way that is invisible to Seungkwan — and so, no longer comforting.

"I can take care of myself," Seungkwan says, and then, because he's sick of beating around the bush, "I also don't need you, or Jeonghan-hyung, to launch some sort of secret mission to make me go to the reunion."

Chan frowns and opens his mouth like he's about to say something that will surely only make Seungkwan cross, but the door to their room slides open and a waiter enters with trays of meat and the bottles of soju they'd ordered. Seungkwan turns his attention to the waiter and helps move their water glasses out of the way so he has space to lay out all the food. Chan glares at him over the top of the waiter's head the entire time.

The moment the door shuts, leaving them once again alone, Chan says, irritation plain in his voice, "You have to come to the reunion." 

“Maybe I’m not free.”

Chan arches an eyebrow. “Apparently Coups-hyung checked the date with everyone’s managers and had it blocked out.”

This is a level of foresight — and, maybe, perceptiveness about other people and their potential excuses — that Seungkwan would not have expected from Seungcheol. He wonders who Seungcheol’s been talking to about this reunion, who he’s been planning it with. Or maybe Seungcheol has become more devious in the past two years, and Seungkwan just wasn’t there to see it.

Seungkwan cracks open a bottle of soju and pours them each a glass. Chan takes the offered glass from Seungkwan but clicks his tongue as he does so.

"Well, maybe I just don’t want to go." Seungkwan lifts his glass and holds it out towards Chan, who clinks their glasses together without missing a beat. They knock back the soju together. It tastes sweet on Seungkwan's tongue and burns only slightly on the way down. He sets the glass back down on the table firmly. 

Chan pours them both another glass of soju. Seungkwan doesn't pick his glass up again and neither does Chan.

"It's fifteen years," Chan says, as if Seungkwan — of all people — could have possibly forgotten, "Coups-hyung would be furious if you don't go." He pauses, then corrects, "If any of us don't go."

Seungkwan stares at him. It's not clear if there's actually any realistic prospect of any of the other members not going, or if Chan is just emphasising the equality of Seungcheol's hypothetical rage.

He starts laying strips of meat out on the hot plate, focusing on the satisfying sizzle. This isn't something that he used to have to do — Mingyu was always more than happy to take up the task of cooking the meat; or Seokmin. Sometimes even Jeonghan, who would complain about it the whole time but actually enjoyed being in control, demanding little things in return for being given some food — a little bit of aegyo, a compliment, a sexy dance. Wisps of memories float up along with the smoke rising from the barbecue. Seungkwan points the hood at the smoke and sucks it all up.

"I'm surprised you're not making the maknae cook," Chan points out. Seungkwan used to make a big fuss about this, partly for the reaction it drew out of Chan, partly because he can't help that he takes these things seriously. But anyway Chan's not a maknae anymore, not really. Can't have a youngest without having a team.

Seungkwan studiously flips the meat, keeping his gaze directed away from Chan. “Is everyone else going?” 

“I think so,” Chan says, though he doesn’t sound certain. Seungkwan wonders which of the members Chan is still close to, which ones he only talks to via the group chat. He doesn’t know how to ask. Chan’s fingers drum a quick, repeated, rhythm on the glossy wood surface of the table. “Vernon-hyung said he’d be there. You saw that, right?”

“Mm.” Seungkwan picks up a piece of meat from the hot plate and dishes it out onto Chan’s plate, still avoiding eye contact. “I did.”

Chan is staring at him; Seungkwan can feel the weight of his gaze on the side of his head. He continues distributing the meat between them, waiting for the inevitable next question. Whatever it is, he knows he won’t have an answer for it.

Chan lets out a slow breath, a sigh more befitting someone thrice his age. “How long are you going to be mad at him for?”

Seungkwan presses his lips together. “I’m not mad at him.”

“Yes you are.”

Seungkwan puts his chopsticks down, and lifts his head to look at Chan. “I’m really not,” he says. This is something that has been true for a while now. Maybe it had been true all along, and Seungkwan just never realised. It is easier, he thinks, to be angry at someone than to let them break your heart.

A crease appears between Chan’s brows. His eyes are bright with confusion, like he’s been trying to solve a puzzle for so long, only for someone to tell him a solution that he doesn’t understand. For a moment he looks twenty again — brimming with just as much uncertainty as he is overflowing with hope.

“You should talk to him again,” Chan says. His voice is subdued, a little careful. “I think he misses you.”

Seungkwan looks down. The surface of the table is so polished that he can almost see his own reflection in it. He hadn’t noticed before, but now that he has — he can’t stop staring. He wonders what it would feel like to be a reflection, to not exist except when being looked at.

He blinks hard. Picks up his glass of soju, brings it to his lips and tips it back. This time, it stings a little more than before. He sets it back down on the table, and nudges it towards Chan. Forces a smile that he knows doesn’t reach all the way to his eyes.

“Come on,” he chides, “pour your hyung another one.”

Chan rolls his eyes — whether at the instruction or at the way Seungkwan’s obviously changed the subject, Seungkwan doesn’t know — but dutifully fills the glass. They lift their glasses again, knock them against each other. They drink, they eat, they talk. It’s still easy, being together. That hasn’t changed. 

Everything else, though — everything else is different.

Three months ago, on his birthday, Vernon dropped his first solo mixtape. 

Seungkwan knew, sort of vaguely through the other members and the industry grapevine in general, that Vernon had been working on his own music. He knew that Vernon had been spending more time with Jihoon in the studio, the two of them co-writing songs for an impressive number of artists. 

He certainly didn’t realise that Vernon was going to release seven whole songs — practically a full album. He also didn’t realise that the songs would be— 

That the whole album would be—

In any case, Seungkwan remembers going home that evening, his phone sitting heavy in his pocket. Every so often, it buzzes — the group chat going off with a message, yet another member wishing Vernon a happy birthday, or congratulating him on the release of his mixtape. Seungkwan has done neither of those things.

He flops himself down onto the sofa, dropping his bag onto the floor. He hasn’t turned on the lights, and the living room is illuminated only by the glow of the city streaming in through the full-length windows. The flat is silent and cold. No one else lives here. Seungkwan barely even lives here, he spends so much time working.

When he finally goes to look for it, Vernon’s mixtape isn’t difficult to find. It’s on the front page of all the music streaming sites, already rising rapidly to the top spot despite having been out for less than twelve hours. The cover is a grainy picture of Vernon from the back, dressed in a huge flannel shirt with a mustard-yellow beanie tucked down over his hair, walking down a street at night. The street is familiar — not far from the dorms where they used to live.

The picture itself is familiar too. Seungkwan was the one who took it.

Seungkwan stares at the picture for far too long, and it takes a moment before the title catches his eye. His heart slams into his throat and gets lodged there.

Concern, the English title.

In Korean, kwanshim. 

Shim, as in heart. Kwan, as in—

Seungkwan releases a shaky breath, and presses play.

Seven whole songs. Two about falling in love. One about friendship. 

And four, the bulk of the album — about heartbreak.

Seungkwan listens to the whole thing five times through. He thinks that maybe he should cry but he doesn’t remember how. He lies face up on his bed and stares into the nothingness above him.

Just before midnight, his phone buzzes with a message. Seungkwan holds it above his face and stares at the screen. It’s from Vernon.

Did you listen?

Seungkwan doesn’t reply. 

Three months later, he still hasn’t.

Jeonghan calls and messages so many times that weekend, that Seungkwan finally agrees to go visit him. The taxi ride to Ilsan takes barely half an hour; Seungkwan spends the entire time fidgeting in the back seat. He hasn’t seen Jeonghan in months. 

“Ah, who’s this stranger,” Jeonghan says, in lieu of a proper greeting. He’s waiting for Seungkwan outside the strawberry farm he'd purchased and started running — the only member who's left the entertainment industry entirely. Seungkwan doesn't know if this is surprising, or exactly to be expected. A bit of both, he suspects.

Jeonghan folds Seungkwan into a hug. He feels more solid than he used to, less brittle and breakable. Seungkwan wraps his arms around Jeonghan and breathes in his familiar powdery scent — now mixed with something earthy, and warm.

As they pull apart, Seungkwan looks Jeonghan up and down. He laughs, "Why are you dressed like that?" 

Jeonghan beams and holds his arms out. He's wearing denim overalls, plus floral-print ahjumma arm covers pulled up to his elbows. There's a polka-dotted bandana tied around his neck. 

"I'm a farmer now!" Jeonghan declares, with a wink.

"You don't even live here full-time," Seungkwan says, rolling his eyes, but he knows that Jeonghan will be able to hear the fondness in his voice. He lets Jeonghan usher him in through a side gate and down towards a section of the farm that Jeonghan conspiratorially describes as being "for special guests only". They duck into one of the long, tunnel-shaped greenhouses. The sunlight, filtered through translucent plastic, casts a soft, diffused glow over them.

The vines are heavy with the plump, ripe fruit — spots of bright red amongst the lush green leaves. Jeonghan picks up an empty punnet and hands it to Seungkwan.

They start walking through the rows of vines, chatting idly about work, their families, straying even into what some of the other members have been up to. But they skirt around the heart of the matter, the real reason Seungkwan's been summoned here. Jeonghan isn't the kind of person to shy away from saying what he wants to say, which must mean — he's forcing Seungkwan to bring it up himself.

Seungkwan plucks a strawberry off the vine and, instead of adding it to his punnet, pops it directly into his mouth. Some of the juice runs down his chin, and he wipes it away with the back of one hand.

Jeonghan looks sideways at him and arches an eyebrow. "You know," he says, "technically you're not allowed to eat the strawberries as you pick them."

Seungkwan reaches out for another strawberry, snapping it off the vine. As he bites into it, he makes steady, unblinking eye contact with Jeonghan. 

A soft smile spreads across Jeonghan's face. He parks his hands on his hips and tilts his head at Seungkwan. "Okay, fine," he says, the hint of a laugh in his voice, "you got me. I didn’t just bring you here to pick strawberries.” He pauses, like he’s thinking of how to start, how to untangle the twisted jumble of everything they used to be and have now become to each other. Finally, he says, “I know you saw Chan last week."

Seungkwan raises his eyebrows. "Then you'll know I told him to tell you to mind your own business." 

Jeonghan shrugs, unapologetic. His expression shades into something a little more serious. "I want you to come to the reunion dinner," he says, straight to the point. His gaze on Seungkwan is gentle but insistent, the soft pressure of the ocean carving away the shore.

“Why?” Seungkwan holds Jeonghan’s gaze, even as it prickles beneath his skin. 

Jeonghan chuckles on an exhale, turning away. They've arrived at the end of the row, and Seungkwan watches as Jeonghan turns to walk back down the next row over. His fingers trail along the broad green leaves, leisurely and contemplative. Until he comes to a stop right next to Seungkwan, barely a few feet away but with a row of strawberry plants between them.

Jeonghan lifts his gaze to Seungkwan. “I want you to stop running away from us.”

A flash of irritation flares in Seungkwan’s chest. He bites down on the inside of his cheek to stop it from showing on his face, but he knows that Jeonghan will have noticed. “You're the ones who left," he says, and though he tries he can't keep the bite of accusation out of his voice. 

“We left the job,” Jeonghan says, picking out each syllable carefully, a funny emphasis to his words, “We didn't leave the team. We didn’t leave you. We’re all still here.”

The weight of Jeonghan staring at him — that all-knowing, all-seeing look in his eyes — becomes abruptly too much to bear. Seungkwan drops his gaze to the half-full punnet of strawberries in his hand. He notices, for the first time, that there’s a sticker on the side of it with a cartoon drawing of Jeonghan’s face, beneath the words Yoon-ssi’s Strawberry Garden! One edge of the sticker is peeling away slightly from the plastic, and Seungkwan picks at it with his thumbnail.

“Hyung,” he says, quietly, “why did you buy this farm?”

There’s a long pause. Seungkwan waits, staring at the cartoonish likeness of Jeonghan on the sticker. The drawing is very distinctly Jeonghan, despite looking nothing like him at all. Seungkwan thinks about the caricatures of themselves into which they’ve poured the very essences of their being. He thinks about what, at the end of the day, they have left behind.

He looks up at Jeonghan. At his high cheekbones and long lashes — but also at the freckles on the bridge of his nose, the faded constellation of blemishes on his jaw, the faintest hint of lines at the outsides of his eyes. 

The corners of Jeonghan’s lips curve upwards, a wry smile. “It seemed like it would be fun,” he says, jerking one shoulder in a shrug. “I thought it would make me happy. And I guess — I wanted to.”

Seungkwan frowns. He wonders what Jeonghan is seeing, looking at him. 

“Maybe,” he says, the thought striking him for the first time, “I should buy a farm too. Or an orange orchard, back in Jeju? That seems like it would be nice, doesn’t it?”

Jeonghan laughs. It’s a fond sound. Warmth suffuses Seungkwan.

“I can’t tell you what you want, Seungkwan-ah,” he says. “No one can.”

Seungkwan knows this. He still wishes someone would, though. 

Jeonghan plucks a strawberry from the vine, and pops it into his mouth. He grins at Seungkwan, perfect white teeth clacking together. “Have a strawberry,” he insists, gesturing with one hand, “the owner’s really strict about eating while picking, but fuck that guy!”

Seungkwan rolls his eyes, but he does as instructed. He chooses the plumpest strawberry he can find. It’s sweet and fresh and when he bites into it, juice runs down his chin. This time, he doesn’t bother wiping it away with his hand. The juice drips onto his shirt, and Seungkwan looks down at it, a pink smear against the pale blue. Jeonghan cackles, and Seungkwan can’t help himself but smile along.

In the last few years before the team broke up, most of them didn’t even live together anymore. 

One by one, the members bought homes of their own. Not far from each other, but still so much farther than they had become so used to, for so long. The only exceptions — Mingyu and Wonwoo, the first ones to move out together and who had stayed roommates since; and also Soonyoung and Jihoon, who shared a flat that was, in Seungkwan’s view, unnervingly close to the company building.

And, of course, Seungkwan and Vernon.

They hadn’t really talked about it, but as everyone slipped away, one after the other — Vernon ended up being the only one who stayed. They moved out of the dorms into a three-bedroom flat, turned the extra bedroom into a music studio. Vernon was cutting his teeth as a producer, and sometimes Seungkwan would sit on the sofa behind him, watching him work. Other times Vernon would hum melodies to him and Seungkwan would sing demo for the track, the two of them tucked away together into their own little corner of the world, making something to call their own.

Seungkwan would never admit it to himself, but part of him assumed that Vernon would always stay by his side. Maybe that was selfish. Maybe that was naive. Maybe that was why, when Vernon first brought up disbanding, it hurt Seungkwan the most.

He remembers it well, coming home after filming yet another variety programme — his third one that week. They’re sufficiently well-established that they rarely appear on shows with all thirteen of them anymore, and it’s left mostly up to the members to work out between themselves who does what. Seungkwan, of course, does almost every single show.

It’s exhausting. Seungkwan never complains, but he's starting to think that maybe he hates it.

He kicks off his shoes when he gets home, and heads straight for Vernon’s studio. Vernon looks up as Seungkwan clatters in and collapses face-first onto the sofa.

Neither of them say anything. Seungkwan can hear the creaking of Vernon’s chair as he moves, the roll of wheels across the wood. He keeps his face pressed into the weird cushion with the repeating pattern of hot-dogs printed all over it, the one he’d seen online and bought just because he knew it would make Vernon laugh. He stays there until he runs out of oxygen, and then he turns his head towards Vernon.

The lighting in here is dim, the neon light sign above Vernon’s desk glowing a techno-green. Seungkwan can still tell that Vernon is frowning, eyebrows slanted downwards in the middle and a deep crease between them. 

“I’m fine,” Seungkwan says, even though Vernon hasn’t asked. He rearranges himself into a more comfortable position, pulling his legs up so he’s sitting cross-legged on the sofa. “Just tired. Seriously. Don’t look at me like that.”

Vernon’s mouth tugs downwards at the corners. “Why do you even do these shows?” he asks. It’s a conversation they’ve had before, one that Seungkwan’s always brushed away. “You don’t even like it.” This isn’t a question.

Seungkwan has thought about this a lot recently — if he’s ever enjoyed doing variety. He remembers, at the start, it being a liferaft that he clung to — the one thing that he was unequivocally best at in the team, the one thing he could contribute. He remembers his relief at not being deadweight. He remembers the comfort of slipping into a role that he knows how to play. But he also remembers the anxiety of wondering whether he’s being funny enough, or too funny, or funny in the wrong way. The weight of attending variety shows alone and carrying their reputation on his shoulders. The burden of responsibility that he doesn’t feel qualified to bear.

Does he remember the joy? Does he remember the exhilaration, the thrill, the simple happiness of doing something for the sake of it? Maybe, he thinks, but then again — maybe not.

He looks at Vernon now in the eerie green light. “I do like it,” he says. It sounds hollow, even to his own ears. He scrunches up his face and tries again. “It’s important for the team.”

Vernon folds his arms across his chest. “You like it, or it’s important for the team?”

Seungkwan doesn’t know why, but he feels like he’s being interrogated. He picks up the hot-dog cushion and hugs it in front of himself like a shield. “Why can’t it be both?”

“Is it both?”

Seungkwan’s mouth twists into a scowl. “What is up with you? Why are you being so weird?”

The tight knit of Vernon's eyebrows slackens slightly, and the tightness around his eyes shifts into something sadder, almost morose. His shoulders sag. 

"I just think that you shouldn't have to do all this for us," Vernon says. His voice is muted, but there is a certainty in his tone — like there is no doubt in his mind that what he's saying is true. "We're fine. This shouldn't be your burden to bear."

Seungkwan's chest feels like it might burst. He blinks hard, eyes stinging. "But it is my burden," he says, arms tightening around the cushion. "It's what I do."

Vernon stares at him. "But is it what you want to do?"

"It doesn't matter," Seungkwan replies, more terse than he intends but he can't help it, "It's what I have to do. For the team."

There's a long pause. Vernon opens his mouth, then seems to reconsider and presses his lips together again. He frowns. He clenches his hands into fists on his knees and then unclenches them again. The tension between them stretches like taffy, thick and viscous. Goosebumps pimple on Seungkwan's skin as he waits for the blade to fall.

Finally, with exquisite care, Vernon says, "But what would you do, if you only had to think about yourself?" The look in his eyes is almost pleading. Seungkwan doesn't want to know what he's pleading for. "If there wasn't a team that needed—"

"Don't." Seungkwan cuts in sharply. Panic rises like bile, bitter on his tongue. He can tell where this is going. "Don't say it—" 

Vernon unfolds his arms and tugs his sleeves down over his hands. He leans forward, elbows on his knees. "Seungkwan-ah," he says, and there's a weird thickness to his voice, like maybe he's hurting too, but Seungkwan can't hear it, can't process anything but his own terror, clawing deep into his heart. Vernon continues, "Maybe, when the contract runs out this year, we should just—" 

Seungkwan pushes himself to standing abruptly, before he even realises he's done it. The hot-dog cushion tumbles soundlessly to the ground. He blinks down at Vernon. 

"We're not talking about this."

Vernon lifts his gaze to Seungkwan. He looks as exhausted as Seungkwan feels. Seungkwan is struck by a sudden sense that Vernon has been waiting a long, long time to bring this up. The thought lances through him like a betrayal.

"We have to talk about this at some point," Vernon says. There is no fight left in his voice. 

"No," Seungkwan says. "We don't."

He turns and walks out of the room. Vernon watches him leave, but he doesn't say anything more. Seungkwan remembers wondering, at the time — if he kept on walking forever, whether anyone would try to stop him.

Two weeks before the reunion, he has dinner with Nayeon. 

They go to Nayeon’s favourite sushi place — “Sana likes it, so you know it’s actually good,” she insists, not that Seungkwan was protesting — and even though they haven't seen each other in months, they slip easily back into the rhythm of their friendship. It’s funny, Seungkwan thinks, that Seventeen and Twice overlapped at music shows so many times throughout their career, but it was only after both of their groups disbanded that the two of them really became friends.

Or maybe it's unsurprising — before, Seungkwan had no real need to go seeking out new friends, not when he already had twelve people around him who were as close as family. Now, on the other hand—

Nayeon's ordered them a bottle of plum wine to share, and Seungkwan sips at it out of a round-bottomed glass while she regales him with tales of her recent trip to Bali. She'd gone with Jeongyeon and Jihyo, she says, the three of them having found a rare overlap of free time in their schedules. Seungkwan hasn't been on a holiday with friends in ages — he doesn't even know who he'd go with. But his envy is only distant and dull, the shine of Nayeon's simple happiness uplifting him more than it drags him down.

Nayeon tips her cheek into the palm of her hand, elbow resting against the table. "We got to talking on the trip," she says, the expression on her face shifting into something more wistful, "about how it's almost our fifteenth anniversary. And we were thinking, maybe we should have a reunion comeback." She shrugs. "You know, like SNSD did? Do you remember that?"

Of course Seungkwan remembers. He and Soonyoung had played the song in their dorm on repeat for weeks, much to Jeonghan and Jihoon's dismay. They'd danced in the living room and shouted the lyrics at each other — "Forever one! It's love, it's love, we're not stopping!" — before dissolving into delighted giggles. At the time, they'd been mere months out from their first contract renewal. Things had seemed so simple, then.

Now, he just smiles and nods at Nayeon and tries to tamp down the ache of nostalgia. "That's such a nice idea," he says. "You should definitely do that."

She tells him that the girls have messaged about it a little, and everyone's on board, in theory. There'll be a mess of schedules to coordinate, but that's the easy part, she says. The difficult part is wanting the same thing in the first place.

As she says this, her gaze settles heavily on him, like she's looking for the answer to a question she hasn't asked. It reminds him, Seungkwan thinks, of Joshua — and the way he would sometimes look at them, without saying a word, and yet somehow get them to confess some secret they had been trying to squirrel away. Seungkwan looks away from her and fusses with the pot of green tea.

"It's your fifteenth anniversary soon as well, isn't it?" she asks, voice perfectly nonchalant, even though they'd debuted in the same year, five months apart, and so she surely already knows the answer. "End of the month, right?"

Seungkwan very studiously pours them each a cup of tea. "Yeah," he says. If Nayeon asks whether they're planning a reunion comeback… There is not much in this world more painful than hope. Preemptively, he says, "We're not doing anything, though," — then pauses, because that's not quite true either, and adds, "maybe just a dinner."

Nayeon raises both eyebrows at him. "And you're going to that dinner, of course," she says, in a tone of voice that suggests she's aware he's half-planning not to, and that she disapproves. 

Seungkwan scrunches his nose at her. "I don't know yet," he says. "It depends."

"Depends on what?" She clicks her tongue and, when he goes to pick up a piece of sushi, she snatches up her own chopsticks to knock his away. "Yah, Boo Seungkwan. You have to go to your own reunion."

Seungkwan shoots her a baleful look at having been denied his sushi. "You don't get it," he grumbles. 

"Then explain it to me," Nayeon says. Her eyes are huge and round, and she juts her lips into a pout. "Every time I ask about it, you just say things ended badly. But are you really going to throw away thirteen years — no, more, including training… half your life!" She furrows her brow at him. "Do you even talk to any of them anymore?" 

"Some," Seungkwan mumbles, vaguely. He saw Chan and Jeonghan only recently — though of course those meetings had been orchestrated with the precise aim of getting him to go to the reunion. But he texts most of the others, on and off — he wouldn't say he has a bad relationship with any of them.

Well, any of them except—

Seungkwan sets down the chopsticks in his hand, a little more forcefully than he'd meant to. They make a sharp noise against the table. Next to him, he feels Nayeon shift, and then she's leaning closer, touching one hand to the his elbow. She smells sweet, like peaches. Seungkwan thinks of strawberries and he thinks of Jeju oranges and he thinks of all the places people run away to and all the places they run away from.

"Not Vernon," he says, making a frankly impressive attempt at keeping his voice perfectly level, "I haven't spoken to him since—" He breaks off. His heart spasms in his chest. 

Over the past two years, Seungkwan has avoided talking directly about the disbandment by simply side-stepping it whenever it comes up — but he knows that Nayeon isn't stupid, and that she's gathered up enough scraps to understand the broad strokes of what's going on. Not to mention, Seungkwan is well aware that he's not the only member of Seventeen she's friends with — he doesn't want to even think about what the others have said about him to her. Maybe everything. Maybe nothing at all. Seungkwan can't tell which would be worse.

Nayeon makes a murmuring noise of vague acknowledgement. "He released a mixtape earlier this year, didn't he?" she asks, in a way that suggests she already knows the answer to this question. "It wasn't really my kind of music, but I listened to it." Here, she pauses — the unspoken question hangs in the air between them.

Seungkwan can almost hear it in Vernon's voice— 

Did you listen?

"Yeah," Seungkwan says. He jerks one shoulder in a jagged shrug. "I listened to it too."

Nayeon moves her hand to his shoulder, gives it a squeeze. It's a surprisingly firm grip for someone so slight, in a way that's oddly reminiscent of Seungcheol. It makes Seungkwan tip a little further back into the infinite abyss of memory.

"Did you know," she says, drawing her hand back and tucking a strand of hair behind one ear, "that after we disbanded, Sana and Mina didn't speak for a whole year?" 

Seungkwan stares at her. Twice had broken up shortly before them, and Seungkwan had always been of the impression that aside from the usual sadness that came with any disbandment, the nine girls had remained on pretty good terms with each other. But maybe he had just been too caught up in his own world falling apart to notice the same thing happening to anyone else.

But, leaving that aside, in any case— 

"Aren't they dating now?"

Nayeon smiles at him. She props her elbow on the table and rests her chin in the curve of her palm. Her nails, prettily manicured in a pattern of pastel flowers, tap a thoughtful rhythm against her cheek.

"Yes, they are," she says, tilting her head at him like there's some deeper meaning he's meant to gather from beneath her words, "I guess sometimes love just takes a few wrong turns." 

Seungkwan doesn't say anything to that. He's taken so many wrong turns that he doesn't even think he knows how to find his way back home.

Once it became clear that the disbandment was inevitable, Seungkwan started looking for a place of his own. He wasn’t the richest of the thirteen of them, not by a distance, but with all the income from his variety appearances he’d built up a pretty tidy pot of savings and that was enough to get him a fancy two-bedroom in Gangnam — the kind of place that, ten years ago, would have seemed to him like the pinnacle of success. Now, when the sale contract arrives in the post, Seungkwan just pulls it out of the envelope and stares at the signature line with a mounting sense of dread that the best years of his life are already well past him.

Vernon arrives home as the sun is setting. Seungkwan hasn’t turned any of the lights on. He sits at the kitchen island, drenched in a fiery orange glow. When Vernon opens the door, stark shadows stretch across his features.

His gaze alights on Seungkwan, and then on the sheaf of papers sitting on the counter in front of him. He drops his keys into the dish by the door, the one that they’d bought together at a street market in Paris during one of their tour stops, many years ago. Seungkwan wonders which of them will get to keep the dish. 

“Have you signed it?” Vernon asks. He stands on the other side of the island, looking down at the contract. His brows are knitted in the middle, and Seungkwan can tell, even in the harsh light, that his jaw is tightly clenched. Both of his hands are fists, resting on the surface of the counter.

Seungkwan shakes his head. “No,” he says. “Not yet.”

They haven’t spoken much in recent weeks. Vernon was one of the members who chose not to renew his contract with the company — saying he wanted to go in a different direction, with a new creative team. Seungkwan had made his feelings on the decision known. Vernon had not backed down. There wasn’t much left to say about that.

Vernon sucks on his teeth. He’s not happy with Seungkwan’s decision to move out. This isn’t something he’s said, directly — but he doesn’t need to, for Seungkwan to know.

“You know, just because we’re not going to be working together anymore doesn’t mean we can’t live together,” Vernon says. He’s still staring at the contract. Seungkwan can’t read anything from the stoic stillness of his face. “Mingyu and Wonwoo are still living together, and neither of them even knows what they’re going to do next.”

“That’s different,” Seungkwan says.

Vernon looks up at him, suddenly. There is an intensity in his gaze that Seungkwan rarely sees — more insistent, more demanding, than Vernon usually is. 

“How?” he asks. “How is it different?” 

There’s the hint of a challenge in his tone — like he already knows the answer to this question, and he knows that Seungkwan knows it too, and he’s daring Seungkwan to come right out and say it. But Seungkwan doesn’t actually know. All he knows is that it’s different. Him and Vernon, whatever it is — they’re different.

“It doesn’t matter,” Seungkwan snaps. “They’re them, and we’re us. For whatever reason, they’re fine living with an ex-coworker. And I’m not.”

Vernon’s face twitches. The corners of his mouth tug downwards. “Ex-coworker,” he repeats, pronouncing each syllable carefully. His voice is rigidly flat. “Is that what I am to you?” 

The most ludicrous thing, Seungkwan thinks, is that things would be so much easier if Vernon could just be his ex-coworker. Instead, they’re teetering on the brink so many other things — all of which from now on can surely only be expressed in the past tense.

Seungkwan grits his teeth. “What else is there?”

Vernon glares at him. He’s trembling slightly, and it would be almost imperceptible except that Seungkwan knows him and he knows his calm and his stillness and this is something different. Seungkwan realises that this is possibly the angriest Vernon has ever been, at least so far as Seungkwan has ever seen him.

But at the same time that this realisation dawns, comes a surging resentment — how dare he be angry, what right does he have? When he’s the one choosing to leave, and Seungkwan is the one scrabbling to not be left behind?

“What do you want me to say?” Seungkwan says, louder than he’d meant it.

Vernon's face hardens even further. "I want you to tell me something true," he says, his voice crackling with tightly contained anger. "Tell me what we are to each other."

Seungkwan inhales sharply. He snatches up the contract. The papers crumple in his hand as he clenches it into a fist. "You want something true?" he asks, feeling himself quivering with how much strain it's taking to hold himself together. Cracks fissure through his voice like glass — once it’s started it can’t stop, just keeps picking up speed and picking up speed, until — “What is a contract but a few sheets of paper stapled together? Sign it, don’t sign it, what does it matter? You’re asking me? What we are to each other?”

He scoffs, tosses the contract across the counter. They both watch as it slides and almost flies off the edge, coming to a stop only when it bumps into Vernon’s torso. A beat passes, both of them staring at the wrinkled stack of paper lying on the counter between them. Then Seungkwan lifts his gaze — he looks into Vernon’s eyes at the same time that Vernon does the same. Something leaps between them, something fervent and electric and burning hot. Seungkwan’s breath catches in his lungs like a hook. 

“You tell me, Chwe Hansol,” he bites out. “You tell me.”

Vernon presses his hand down into the contract. For a moment Seungkwan thinks that he’s going to pick it up and rip it to shreds. But, instead, he just pushes it across the counter, slides it back in front of Seungkwan.

“Sign the fucking contract, Boo Seungkwan,” he says. 

And then he leaves. Seungkwan sits alone in the rapidly darkening room for hours. He’s not waiting for Vernon to come back, and anyway Vernon doesn’t. The sun sets around him and the world bleeds into night. 

He does sign the contract, in the end. He doesn’t tell Vernon, but he doesn’t need to. He knows that Vernon knows.

After dinner with Nayeon, Seungkwan crawls into bed and puts on Vernon’s mixtape again. He listens to it all the way through, and then all the way through again backwards. The songs about heartbreak fade back into the songs about falling in love. 

He picks up his phone and opens the chat with Vernon.

The same message from three months ago. Did you listen?

Seungkwan types out a reply. It’s what he should have said, three months ago. He hesitates for only a second, before hitting send.

I listened, he writes. 

Within seconds, the message flicks to ‘read’, and the typing indicator appears. Seungkwan stares at the screen, waiting for Vernon to message him. Wondering if he will. The typing indicator disappears, then appears again.

Seungkwan sends another message: 

Can we talk?

The chat goes still. Seungkwan imagines Vernon on the other end of the line, frowning at the message, confused. After two years of silence, Seungkwan reaching out. Is Vernon happy to hear from him? Is he sad? Is he everything and nothing in between?

His phone blinks with a reply.

Of course, Vernon writes. I’ve been waiting.

The last time they saw each other — two years ago. The day that Seungkwan moved out. 

Most of the day passes by in a flurry. Seungkwan isn't quite done with packing, and he spends the morning in a whirlwind of packing tape and bubble wrap, trying to finish up before the movers arrive. Vernon is there, and then not there — he sits at the kitchen island hunched over a bowl of cereal as Seungkwan counts boxes in the living room, then slips out the front door as Seungkwan clatters around the bathroom shoving the last of his toiletries into a weekend bag. Seungkwan re-emerges from the bathroom to find the flat empty. He shouldn't be surprised, really. But it still stings.

The movers arrive shortly after, and Seungkwan shows them to his bedroom, points out all the furniture that needs to be moved. He's taking everything in the bedroom, but none of the shared furniture — it's not something that they'd discussed, but Seungkwan knows that he doesn't want any of it. If Vernon doesn't either, he can throw it all away.

Seungkwan heads back out into the living room as the movers get to work wrapping his bed frame in protective foam. The front door beeps open, and Vernon steps through. He tugs the beanie off his head with one hand, revealing his mop of soft curls. In his other hand, he holds a takeaway cardboard holder with two cups of coffee shoved into it.

"Got you an Americano," Vernon says. He plucks his own coffee out of the holder, and holds the other out to Seungkwan. "You probably don't have time to go get coffee today."

Seungkwan stares at Vernon. "Uh, thanks," he says, taking the coffee. The expression on Vernon's face is unreadable — perfectly neutral, the surface of an undisturbed lake. Seungkwan has thrown so many pebbles in an attempt to see the ripples, and still all he can see when he looks at Vernon is his own reflection.

He watches now as Vernon wanders off, heading back into his bedroom. Seungkwan thinks about following him, but before he can examine that urge any more closely, one of the movers pokes his head out into the hallway and gestures for his attention. He hurries over to resolve a confusion about whether he wants the bookcase taken apart or wrapped up as is. 

The movers finish packing up Seungkwan’s bedroom, and then it’s a case of moving everything down to the truck. Seungkwan attempts to help at first, but he’s nowhere near as strong as the burly professionals he’s hired, and they quickly wave him off. He hovers at the edge of the living room, watching as these strangers scoop up all of the material things that make up the sum total of who he is, and walk off with it like it weighs nothing.

It takes them barely an hour to empty the flat of every last trace of Seungkwan.

Once the van is loaded, the movers offer him a ride over to the new place with them. Seungkwan glances at Vernon’s closed bedroom door, and hesitates. “I’ll take a taxi over in a bit,” he says. They have the address and the door code, which means they can start unloading even without him there. “I just have — I need to take care of some stuff. Here.”

After they leave, Seungkwan stands in the hallway and waits for Vernon to come out of his bedroom. He thinks about knocking, and he thinks about leaving without another word, and he thinks about charging in and grabbing Vernon by the collar and screaming in his face until his lungs explode. He thinks about crying. He thinks about hugging Vernon. He thinks about saying all the things that he might have said.

In the end, he leans a fraction of an inch closer to the door, and calls out, “Are you going to be mad at me to this extent? Not even a goodbye?”

There’s a moment, a pause, in which Seungkwan thinks that Vernon is really not going to come out of his room. It sends a cold wash of panic through him, a frozen slush of dismay.

Then the sound of shuffling, and the door opening. Vernon stands in front of him, hair sticking up every which way, face faintly splotchy, dressed in a tie-dye t-shirt three sizes too big for him and baggy sweatpants. Seungkwan’s heart clenches.

“Ah,” Seungkwan mumbles, faltering, “were you asleep?” For as long as Seungkwan has known him, Vernon has had the incredible ability to fall asleep in the blink of an eye. He naps on every mode of transport and in every dressing room they’ve ever spent any time in.

Vernon just looks at him. “Trying to,” he replies. “Couldn’t sleep.”

“Oh.” Seungkwan doesn’t know what to say to that. He wrings his hands, then notices himself doing it and immediately stops. Which leaves him with hands clasped in front of himself like he’s in prayer, and that's weird too, so he drops them back down to his sides. Shoves them into the pockets of his jeans. Takes them out again. 

Vernon hasn’t moved a muscle this entire time.

“So anyway,” Seungkwan starts, aiming for light-hearted and landing somewhere closer to frantic, “I just came to say bye. I’m going to — I’m leaving now.”

“Okay,” Vernon says, “Goodbye then.” As he says this he twitches a little, like every muscle in his body is tightly clenched and on the verge of coming undone. Seungkwan realises in that moment that Vernon still has one hand on the handle from when he’d opened the door. He’s gripping it so tightly that his knuckles are white. 

“You’re mad at me, aren’t you,” Seungkwan says. “You can tell me if you’re mad at me.”

Vernon takes a sharp inhale. His chest rises with the effort, and then he breathes out slowly, through flared nostrils. His lips are pressed tightly together. A muscle in his jaw jumps. 

“Yeah, okay, I’m mad at you.”

“For moving out?” Seungkwan digs his teeth into his lower lip. “What, you can leave, and I can’t?”

A spasm of emotion crosses Vernon’s face, but it’s gone too quickly for Seungkwan to read. “You keep saying that I left,” Vernon grits out, voice level but icy in a way that feels foreign and frightening, “but did I, really? Or am I just waiting here for— I mean, if you’d just stopped, even for one second—” He breaks off, and huffs out an exhale. He’s breathing heavily now, and Seungkwan can hear the harshness of his inhales and exhales. “Seungkwan, don’t you get it?” he asks, “After all these years. Do you really not get it?”

Seungkwan can feel himself shrinking away from what he realises now is the enormity of Vernon’s emotions. His gaze flutters away from Vernon’s fixed, ferocious, stare. “What — what are you saying?”

Vernon releases his death-grip on the door handle to rake his hand through his hair. His brows are furrowed so deeply that the crease in his forehead looks like it will never go away. He drops his gaze to the ground, lips pursing as he tries to find the words he wants to say.

Finally, he lifts his gaze back to Seungkwan. “I guess I’m saying — yes, I’m mad at you. But I’m not mad at you for moving out. I’m mad at you because… Because whenever I try to…” His face crumples, mouth tugging downwards. “I feel like I keep trying to show you my heart, and you just keep running away.”

“What,” Seungkwan croaks out. The razor’s edge of panic presses into his throat. “I’m not — what — I’m not running away—” He takes a stumbling step backwards.

Vernon reaches out, catches hold of his wrist. Takes a step closer, the two of them tumbling out into the hallway, suddenly close enough that their chests are almost touching. Seungkwan sucks in a shaky, splintered, breath.

He realises that he has one hand, the one whose wrist Vernon isn’t gripping, clenched around Vernon’s elbow. He doesn’t know when that happened. What he does know is that he doesn’t want to let go.

Vernon's voice drops to barely more than a whisper, “You asked me before — to tell you what we are to each other." There's something weighty in his tone. Seungkwan's heart slams into his throat. Vernon tips forward, leaning his forehead against Seungkwan's. “I’m telling you now.”

And then he closes the barely-there distance between them, and presses their lips together.

Seungkwan’s mind goes startling blank. Everything drops away except for — Vernon. The dry warmth of his hand around Seungkwan’s wrist, broad fingers pressed against his pulse point. The searing heat of his body, surging closer and closing in around him like fire. The slightly chapped coolness of his lips, the firm pressure, the way they part slightly in a gasp—

It takes Seungkwan a moment to realise he’s kissing Vernon back. His hand has dropped to Vernon’s waist, fingers curling around to his back and digging into the soft flesh. His own lips fall open, their tongues sliding together, hot and wet and messy in a way that makes something deep in Seungkwan’s gut twist. His feet stagger backwards, and he tugs Vernon with him, or maybe Vernon pushes closer, or maybe both, until Seungkwan crashes into the wall behind him.

The coiling in his gut spirals up through his chest, a fire ready to consume his entire being. 

“Seungkwan-ah,” Vernon says, breathless against his mouth, somehow speaking while kissing him at the same time. His voice is shattered glass. The shards spear into Seungkwan, and he realises with sudden alarm that he hasn’t been breathing, and his lungs crumple in on themselves, and Seungkwan goes from being aflame to being plunged underwater without warning — running out of air, drowning.

He feels his knees start to buckle. He presses his hands against Vernon, wherever he can reach, one against his hip and the other against the side of his ribs — and pushes. Vernon staggers away from him. Air rushes back into his lungs, slams into his ribs, and Seungkwan takes a desperate, heaving, inhale.

Vernon’s face is scrawled with despair. His hands reach out towards Seungkwan but fall just short.

“What are you—” Seungkwan clutches one hand to his chest. It burns, everything burns. His vision blurs, and he realises distantly that this is because he’s crying. He wipes a hand across his cheek, and it comes away damp. “This isn’t— I don't know—”

Vernon rubs the back of his hand against his eyes. He’s crying too, Seungkwan realises. He can’t remember the last time he saw Vernon cry.

“You know,” Vernon says, voice hoarse, “I know you know.” He looks at Seungkwan, his gaze huge and deep and watery. Terrible and earnest, frighteningly vulnerable. 

Seungkwan opens his mouth to say something. He doesn’t know what. His voice surges into his throat and wedges itself against his heart, already stuck there. Vernon is still looking at him, waiting for him to speak. 

He knows. Maybe he’s always known. Maybe he’s always pretended not to know because it’s easier, holding onto something safe, than jumping into the unknown. Maybe he’s cruel. Maybe he’s frightened. Maybe he’s a fool. Maybe all of the above.

One thing Vernon did get right about him.

Seungkwan swallows all the words that he wants to say, turns on his heel, and runs away.

It takes them a while to work out their schedules — Seungkwan knows that he could probably squeeze in a breakfast here or a coffee there, but he decides without really examining the reasons for his decision that he wants to clear a whole evening. He asks his manager to move some things around, photoshoots and magazine interviews and recording sessions in the studio that are due to be filmed for behind the scenes content. His manager talks to Vernon’s manager, and Seungkwan himself is kept out of the loop. He and Vernon don’t talk or message about it.

Until eventually, on a Tuesday evening — four days before the reunion — Vernon comes to see him.

Seungkwan’s been back from his last schedule for a couple of hours. He’s had a shower, carefully washed the product out of his hair and cleaned the make-up from his face, but that still leaves him some time. Too much time, because he’s rattling in his skin with nerves, and in his restlessness he goes through a series of outfit changes — the oversized hoodie and sweatpants look too much like he’s going to bed, the sky blue button-down shirt and slacks make him look like an office-worker — until finally settling on a white t-shirt and jeans. 

He doesn’t really know why he’s called Vernon here. Only a vague sense that the looming reunion has imposed an artificial deadline — it’ll be bad if he goes to the reunion and it’s the first time he and Vernon have seen each other in two years; but it’ll be just as bad if he doesn’t go and Vernon turns up expecting to see him and he’s not there. In any case, Seungkwan blames Seungcheol entirely — and anyone else who was involved in the planning of the reunion, which probably means Jeonghan and Joshua — for introducing this problem into his life. Except maybe he’s also grateful to them for forcing the issue. It’s hard to tell with the way Seungkwan’s stomach is churning. 

He knows it’s going to be difficult, seeing Vernon again. It still surprises him, just how much it hurts.

“Hi,” Vernon says, when Seungkwan opens the door to let him in. He’s in a black t-shirt and dark jeans, and Seungkwan is overcome by a sense of relief that he’d changed out of the sweatpants. That relief is swiftly replaced by a stab of nostalgia in his chest when Vernon smiles softly at him — years of unspoken emotion shimmering just beneath the surface of his gaze.

Seungkwan stammers through an incoherent offer for Vernon to come in. There is something almost reverent in the way Vernon is looking at him, like he can barely believe that Seungkwan is real. Or like, he thinks that he might be dreaming and if he takes his eyes off Seungkwan for even a split second, the dream will disintegrate.

“This is a nice place,” Vernon says, settling on one end of the sofa as Seungkwan avoids his gaze and fusses about in the kitchen getting water for them both. “Have you been here since… well, this whole time?” He skirts around mentioning Seungkwan moving out, or their kiss, or even the fact that they used to live together. Seungkwan’s heart throbs. He doesn’t want to be ashamed about his own past, and yet he is, and he doesn’t know how to reconcile those two things.

He sets the water down on the coffee table, and takes a seat on the opposite end of the sofa, turning slightly so that he’s facing Vernon. “Yeah,” he replies, glancing around at the sparkling tiled floors and floor-to-ceiling windows. He doesn’t mention that it’s been two years here and he still doesn’t feel settled. That this flat still feels temporary, in a way that the place he and Vernon shared never did, not even when they’d first moved in. He presses his lips together and drags himself out of the sludge of his own melancholy. “What about you — you moved out as well, didn’t you?”

Vernon looks away from Seungkwan now, finally. “It didn’t feel like—” he starts, then stops himself. Seungkwan watches as his brows furrow. “It was just weird. After you left.”

Seungkwan doesn’t know what to say to that. He twists his fingers together in his lap. 

Vernon turns back to him. He’s still frowning, but not like he’s angry. It looks more like he’s thinking very hard, puzzling over something that he can’t quite figure out. 

“Why did you message me?” he asks. The implication is, why now?

“Well, I—” Seungkwan hesitates. Everything he wants to say feels too true, and yet not true enough. He settles for, “I thought it was time that we talked.”

Vernon seems to ponder this, his gaze heavy and searching. And then, just as Seungkwan’s about to blurt out literally anything to break the tense silence, Vernon relaxes — pulls back slightly, flicks his gaze to somewhere just above Seungkwan’s left shoulder, and then back again. 

“Okay,” he says, quietly. No judgement, no pressure, no demand. “What do you want to talk about?”

Seungkwan isn’t nearly ready to talk about what he wants to talk about. Instead, he says, “I listened to your mixtape. It was…good.”

Vernon looks down. His long lashes fan out on the tops of his cheekbones. “Yeah?” He huffs out a small laugh. It sounds resigned — like he’s sad, but about something that he’s already been sad about for a long time.

“I listened the day it came out,” Seungkwan adds, urgently. It feels important that Vernon knows this. “On your birthday. I— I’m sorry I didn’t tell you.”

“That’s okay.” Vernon shrugs, picking at the frayed edge of one of the rips in his jeans, right above the knee. He’s still not looking at Seungkwan. “I’m just glad you listened.”

Seungkwan stares at Vernon. He thinks he can guess, but he needs to know. 

“Was it about me? The mixtape?”

Vernon’s lips curve into rueful smile. “Yeah,” he says, mumbling a little, talking into his chest, “The title was obvious wasn’t it?”

“I guess. A little bit.” Seungkwan really wants Vernon to look at him again. He really wants to touch Vernon, to put his hand on top of Vernon’s and stop him from fidgeting with his jeans. To maybe lace their fingers together. How long has it been since they last held hands? Seungkwan hadn’t realised it was possible to miss something without even realising it, to be struck by years’ worth of longing all at once.

Vernon scrunches his nose. “Chan told me to call it something else, he said it was too obvious.” Seungkwan contemplates the fact that this must mean that Vernon has talked to Chan about this — about them, about him. This is not something that Chan has mentioned before, although Seungkwan supposes it’s something that he could have guessed, had he thought about it. 

He blinks his attention back to Vernon, who continues, “But I think — maybe I wanted it to be obvious. I think I wanted you to know.”

I do know, Seungkwan thinks. And not just about the mixtape. About everything that is Vernon. If there’s anything he doesn’t know, it’s — himself.

He takes a deep breath. 

“I was really angry at you,” he says, as delicately as he can manage. At this, Vernon looks up at him. He doesn’t look surprised, but he does look wary. This is not something that Seungkwan has said out loud before, and certainly not to Vernon. “It felt like you were leaving — like all of you were leaving me. And I was angry at everyone. But I think I was angrier at you than I was at anyone else.”

Vernon nods, tiny bobbing motions of his head, like he’s acknowledging this to himself. But he doesn’t say anything, and so Seungkwan continues, “I guess I knew, deep down, that everyone else would leave. Someday. In the very distant future. But I believed — or wanted to believe — that you would be with me forever.”

This makes Vernon frown again, his eyebrows slanting down sharply in the middle. “I would be,” he says, a barely-veiled force to his words. His gaze on Seungkwan is firm, insistent. “Me leaving the company, the group breaking up — it doesn’t change that. Not for me. Not for any of us."

Seungkwan thinks about clinking soju glasses together with Chan, arguing in that familiar rhythm that has always come so naturally to them. He thinks about standing amongst rows of strawberries with Jeonghan, juice dripping down his chin and Jeonghan laughing his silly little croaky laugh. He thinks about the last time he’d seen Soonyoung and Seokmin, when they’d crashed his place after getting drunk together and the three of them had stayed up until the early morning dancing to girl group songs from ten years ago. He thinks about Minghao being the first to message him on his birthday, even before anyone in his family. He thinks about Junhui and Wonwoo going to Jeju together, and sending him pictures multiple times a day of all the places they’d visited. He thinks about Mingyu going on variety shows and talking about him.

And he thinks of Vernon, sitting across from him, showing him his heart. Even after all this time. Even after everything Seungkwan has done.

Seungkwan closes his hands into fists on his knee and says, “I know that now.”

The expression on Vernon’s face smoothens, his brows going more slack and his eyes widening slightly. Seungkwan offers a small smile, lips pressed together, and holds Vernon’s gaze. The eye contact makes Seungkwan’s skin itch, and he desperately wants to dart his eyes away. But he keeps looking at Vernon, and Vernon keeps looking at him. Slowly, the prickly feeling beneath his skin starts to subside, like a layer of sand being washed away by the rain. 

Vernon speaks first, his voice a low hum. “Are you still angry now?”

Seungkwan shakes his head. His eyes remain fixed on Vernon’s. “Haven’t been in a long time.”

Vernon’s gaze softens. He looks at Seungkwan like that alone — just looking — is the only thing he needs to be happy. His lips curve into the barest hint of a smile, sunrays dappling through the clouds. Seungkwan had forgotten how it feels to have Vernon look at him like that — the warmth of it, the gentleness with which it holds him, the way it lifts it up and makes him feel like he’s flying.

A frisson of anticipation leaps between them. 

“Seungkwan,” Vernon says. Seungkwan’s heart flips and shoots into his throat. Vernon slides his phone out of his pocket, holds it out between them. “Can I play you something?”

Seungkwan nods. His voice seems to have dissipated on his tongue. He watches as Vernon unlocks his phone, carefully scrolling through and searching for something. Finally, he seems to find it — an audio file, Seungkwan can’t see what it’s called. Vernon’s thumb hovers over the play button.

“I wrote this a while ago,” Vernon says, and there’s a waver in his voice that Seungkwan — even after all this time — can pick up on and identify as nervousness. “It was meant to be the last song on the mixtape, but I didn’t— It’s not where I want it to be— I mean, I’ve done what I can—” Vernon trails off. He darts a glance at Seungkwan. “Anyway. You can listen.”

Seungkwan sits quietly, hands folded in his lap. His heart swells with an emotion that he does not dare to name, and that he can barely contain. The intimacy that comes with sharing an unfinished piece of music with someone else — Seungkwan used to be one of the people that Vernon trusted with that. He doesn’t feel worthy of this gift anymore.

And then Vernon presses play, and the song filters gently through the speakers on his phone. 

Seungkwan is familiar enough with Vernon’s style of music. The synths, the sharp beats, the push-and-pull of his rap flow. Even his mixtape, by far the most emotional and personal music Vernon’s ever released, sticks to that general shape. 

The song that plays now is nothing like what Seungkwan expects. 

It’s just — Vernon’s voice. Slowly, barely-there piano slips in beneath his singing.

The lyrics dance delicately across the surface of what feels like an ocean of emotion — a tugging sense of loss, an aching regret, and the anguish of longing for something that you’d once held close. The singing fades into a cautious, restrained rap, hovering somewhere between speaking and whispering. Vernon’s voice is crisp on the consonants, and yawning with despair on the vowels. 

The song builds to a crescendo, guided there by only the swelling piano and the raw emotion with which Vernon sings. The lyrics shift — the ache remains, but it’s overlaid with a lifting sense of hope. The longing soars, swooping and sliding through the melody and the cracked-open vulnerability of Vernon's voice.

The final piano chord plays. Vernon holds the last note. It lingers, drifting slowly towards silence. 

Seungkwan has his palms pressed together like in prayer, in front of his face with the index fingers touching his lips. He blinks, coming slowly back into himself. There is a wetness on his lashes, sparkling in the corners of his vision.

The first thing he sees — Vernon. Sitting just a few feet across from him, on the other end of the sofa. His arms are wrapped around himself, hands holding onto opposite elbows. He’s looking directly at Seungkwan with huge eyes, the expression on his face laid utterly bare. Scrawled across his features, everything that Seungkwan should have seen from years ago — from before they’d disbanded, from before they’d debuted, maybe from the moment they’d first met.

“Hansol-ah,” Seungkwan exhales. 

Vernon blinks fiercely, and looks away, shoving his phone back into his pocket. 

“Hansol,” Seungkwan repeats. His heart feels like it’s stopped beating, suspended and waiting. “Why didn’t you put that song on the mixtape?”

Vernon inhales, long and slow. Releases a shaky exhale. “It’s missing something,” he says. “Someone.” He lifts his gaze to Seungkwan, tilts his head. His gaze is weighty with meaning. “I think it’s meant to be a duet.”

Seungkwan nods. “Yeah,” he whispers, more to himself than out loud, “I think so too.”

Vernon smiles at him, careful and hesitant. Seungkwan lets himself smile back. 

It feels like coming back home.

“I should head back,” Vernon says, shortly after. 

They’re both reeling from having listened to Vernon’s song, and after a few failed attempts at making conversation again it becomes clear that there’s no point to Vernon staying any longer. 

Seungkwan walks him to the door. Vernon tugs his shoes on. When he straightens back up, the two of them are face to face in the entryway, barely two feet apart. It’s the closest they’ve been in a long time. Seungkwan’s heart pounds in his chest.

“I’ll, um, see you around?” he offers. The reunion is four days away. He hesitates, and then adds, “Saturday, maybe?”

“Whenever you want,” Vernon replies. “Whenever you’re ready.”

He starts to turn towards the door, to leave. But it feels wrong. Discordant, a melody cut off before the final note.

Seungkwan reaches out with one hand, catches him by the wrist. Vernon whips back round to look at him, wide-eyed with surprise. It’s the first time they’ve touched since two years ago. Since they kissed.

That time, Vernon was the one who’d caught Seungkwan by the wrist.

Seungkwan, before he can let himself think too much about it and stop himself, tugs Vernon forward. Winds his arms around Vernon’s waist, and pulls him into a hug. Buries his face into Vernon’s shoulder.

“Oh,” Vernon says. He wraps his arms around Seungkwan’s shoulders. 

I’ve missed you, Seungkwan thinks. I’ve missed you and I thought I’d lost you forever and I can’t believe you’re here.  

Vernon tightens his hold on Seungkwan. “It’s okay,” he murmurs into Seungkwan’s hair. “It’s okay. I know.”

Seungkwan lets himself be held, lets himself melt into the warmth and solidity of Vernon. He breathes Vernon in, all wood smoke and pine, and — as hard as he possibly can — pours out all of the love that he’s been keeping buried deep within.

The rest of the week drifts inexorably towards Saturday. 

From the night before, the group chat starts going off with excited messages from the members. Junhui and Minghao send selfies from the airport — they’d managed, whether by accident or prior planning, to land at almost the exact same time, despite flying in from different parts of China. Soonyoung sends a picture of a pile of presents for the members, all wrapped in luridly orange tiger-print paper. Jihoon sends: Can’t wait to see everyone, which is about as effusive as it gets for Jihoon. Jeonghan sends a link to a news article reminding everyone of the launch of his new line of strawberry jam. Mingyu sends an annoyed rant about Jeonghan’s lack of sentiment, and Seungcheol piles in on top of it.

Seungkwan thinks about messaging as well. But he hasn’t sent anything in the group chat in so long, and besides he’s still not sure about whether he’s going to go to the reunion. 

He misses his members. He can admit this to himself now. 

But there’s still a part of him — the part of him that’s kept him away for so long, probably — that wonders if they miss him too. If they feel the ache of his absence the same way he’s felt the ache of theirs. 

The dinner starts at seven. At six, his manager texts to ask if he’ll need a ride to the restaurant. At six-thirty, Seungkwan gets dressed and sits on his sofa and stares out the window, his phone going off every two minutes with a message from someone saying they’re on their way. At seven, there’s another flurry of messages and then at seven-ten, his phone goes silent. Everyone must have arrived. 

Seungkwan wraps his arms around himself and his own loneliness, and tries not to cry.

At seven-thirty, his phone lights up with a call. 

Seungkwan stares at the screen. Jeonghan is calling him. It takes him a few seconds to gather himself, he’s so surprised — and then he picks up.

“SEUNGKWAN-AH!” comes a chorus of voices. Seungkwan can hear Seokmin with startling clarity, but beneath that also — Mingyu, and Soonyoung, and maybe Junhui. And beneath that even, enough voices roaring at him that all twelve members must be shouting at once.

There’s the sound of a scuffle, and then Seokmin wails into the phone, “Seungkwan-ah, where are you? We miss you!”

More scuffling. Soonyoung screams, “Kwanranghae!” from somewhere in the background. Seungcheol’s voice surges forward, “Seungkwan-ah, I know you’re mad at us. Come here and you can yell at us, okay? Please come yell at us, I won’t even try to beat you up about it.” 

“Why would you mention beating him up,” Chan complains, along with the sound of Joshua’s laughter, bright and tinkling.

“What—” Seungkwan starts, but he’s immediately cut off.

“Seungkwan, please, you have to come,” comes Minghao’s crisp voice. Everyone else gets a little more muffled, like Minghao’s grabbed the phone and ducked into a corner. “Mingyu keeps making this scrunchy face like he’s going to cry, you need to come and scold it out of him.”

“It’s true,” Mingyu calls out, his voice suddenly so loud that Seungkwan has to pull his phone away from his ear, “I can’t believe I’m saying this but I miss you arguing with me about everything.”

Distantly, Jeonghan yells, “For god’s sake, give me back my phone!”

Seungkwan can’t help himself. He starts to laugh. It bubbles up in his chest and spills out past his lips and swirls around him like a tide pool of something that feels a lot like happiness. 

“You guys,” he says, and then, like the floodgates opening, he starts to cry. Just a few tears at first, but as the members continue to shriek at him down the phone, he starts to sob properly, hiccuping through his own laughter.

“Oh my god,” says Soonyoung, who apparently has current carriage of the phone, “are you crying? Guys, Seungkwan’s crying!”

“Why would you announce that?” Seungkwan whines, but he’s laughing as well.

Seokmin gasps into the phone. “Seungkwan’s crying?” he repeats, aghast. Seungkwan can hear the moment he starts to cry as well, his voice wavering. “Seungkwan-ah, don’t cry,” he blubbers, “if you cry I’ll cry!”

“You’ve already been crying for like half an hour straight,” comes Chan’s weary voice, getting louder like he’s grabbing the phone. “I’m going to pass the phone to Vernon-hyung, okay?”

There’s the sound of more shuffling, general bickering in the background, and then Vernon’s voice slices through the noise.

“Hey,” Vernon says. “You okay?”

“Yeah.” Seungkwan sniffles, wiping his nose with the back of one hand. “Just a little overwhelmed.”

Vernon pauses, then the background noise becomes suddenly fainter, like he’s taken Seungkwan off speakerphone. He says, quietly but his voice rings through clearly, “You don’t have to come tonight if you’re not ready, you know? Whenever you want, we’ll be here.”

A chorus of muffled 'Yeah!'s echo. Seungkwan giggles. “No, it’s fine, I want to come,” he says. “I’ll be like, half an hour though, is that okay?”

“Of course,” Vernon replies. Seungkwan can hear the smile in his voice. “We’ll be waiting.”

As he goes to hang up, Seungkwan hears Vernon announce to the group, “Seungkwan’s on his way!” This is met with an explosion of cheers — hooting and stomping and frantic seal-like clapping that can only be Seokmin. Seungkwan ends the call, scrambling to his feet to call a taxi and get ready to leave. 

He keeps sniffling, the entire journey over, but he also can’t stop smiling. His cheeks hurt. It feels like he’s crying out the weight of two years — maybe more — of his own closely-held anguish, his personal vault of grief. As he empties himself, the joy that he’s kept firmly locked outside starts to pour in.

When he arrives at the restaurant and gets shown into the private room, he’s immediately pounced on by Seokmin, who screams his name so loudly into his ear that Seungkwan starts to feel dizzy. Mingyu and Junhui swarm around him, eager for their turns at a hug. Joshua pats the back of his head. Someone — probably Soonyoung — leans in and presses a sloppy kiss into his temple. Seungcheol claps him on the shoulder.

Outside the main group huddle, Seungkwan sees Jeonghan and Minghao, tucked into each other’s sides, grinning at him. Jihoon shoots him a thumbs up, eyes suspiciously watery. Wonwoo laughs. Chan shakes his head, a fond smile on his lips.

And, in the far corner of the room, just watching — Vernon. 

Seungkwan catches his eye over the top of Soonyoung’s head. They share a smile.

“Sorry I’m late,” he says, to no one in particular and to everyone at the same time.

Vernon shrugs. His eyes sparkle. He doesn’t stop looking at Seungkwan. “That’s okay,” he says, gently, his voice carrying across the distance between them, “You’re here now.”

Seungkwan closes his eyes and lets himself become rooted in the moment. Something inside of him, something fluttery and precarious, something that’s been teetering on the edge for years and years — starts to settle.

Yes, Seungkwan thinks. He opens his eyes and takes it all in. Here I am, now.