Work Text:
1. Everybody’s Gone to The Rapture
They were training in Los Angeles when Hongjoong first saw The Wolf of Wall Street.
He remembers it clear as day: coming out of a late screening of Suicide Squad with a tremor in his chest; someone talking about Margot Robbie; the tremor intensifying; ‘You gotta see her in—’; Netflix booting up on the living room TV; 2 hours of financial misdemeanors and then—
Peroxide blonde on toxic pink. Long legs. Pencil thin heels. The word ‘daddy’ said one too many times. ‘A sex symbol,’ said Google, ‘is a person widely noted for their sexual attractiveness.’ Hongjoong looked up from the borrowed phone at Seonghwa getting his eyebrows reshaped by a determined stylist. He was red in the face, eyes squeezed shut. Hongjoong looked back down at the screen. Clicked on Images. The scrap of a tabloid headline under Robbie’s face: The Torturous Life of a Sex S…
Seonghwa made a strangled noise a few feet away. Hongjoong wiped the phone history and handed it back to the costume noona.
2. Market Value
The objection to objectification is noticeably absent when they begin putting Seonghwa in form-fitting things. He’s cut down body-weight. There’s filler in there somewhere as well. The hair is getting longer and the concept photos are getting sultrier. In one, he’s staring at the camera, half-submerged in a deeply blue swimming pool with his arms folded. Wet. Hongjoong finds he isn’t opposed to the concept, simply because breaking through in the domestic market with their sound is hard as it is.
3. For Your Eyes Only
They’re in a music show waiting room at 3am, uninvited and fully dressed, waiting for a slim chance to be able to perform. At this point, if they can stumble onstage with himself or a bandmate in nothing but their underwear, he’d take it.
Seonghwa brushes his clip-in bangs to the side and smiles weakly at something Yunho is saying. He’s sweating in his outfit. Military style jacket, little accessories. He glances at Hongjoong and offers him the same tired smile. Hongjoong wonders if he feels sexy. He has a lot more screen time this time around. Progress.
4. We Can Touch Utopia
Concept: You are a captain with a mean streak and a playful streak that burn like twin flames as you forge on ahead on stormy waters to find the evasive ideal known only as Utopia. You will touch it one day, you’re certain. On your ship is your crew who is your family. Among them is a person you’re supposed to trust more than life itself, your friend, confidante, and according to some racy fan theories, your bedmate, according to other less charitable but equally as racy fan theories, your bedwarmer. The others are in your care. You will steer them to a hazy absolution with your aforementioned confidante/friend/bedmate/bedwarmer. All will be well.
5. Compromising
It hits him a bit belatedly what they’re trying to do. Seonghwa grimaces at him at breakfast on a day off. Everyone else is either asleep or already out.
“We can establish ground rules,” he’s saying, chopsticks dragging across the bottom of his bowl. He looks like he hasn’t slept much but that simply may be because of muscle soreness. He’s been doing overtime in the mirrored studio.
Hongjoong finds himself caring astonishingly little. “Don’t try to kiss me.”
“I wasn’t going to.”
“Fine, then.”
6. In Service of Fans
Seonghwa bedecked in a bunny hat and funny glasses. Seonghwa raising a half of a heart. Seonghwa sighing as he gets shoved away.
7. My Mistress Is The Sea
He comes in late at night and crawls into his own bed for the first time in weeks since he got assigned Seonghwa as his roommate. In his dream, Hongjoong is in a coat a tad big on him with the blue hair and rattails from ‘Wonderland’ promos. He’s steering a ship towards a bright light.
‘Captain!’ Wooyoung, jubilant, ‘You might wanna take a look at this.’
A map is thrust under his nose but it’s not a map. It’s a blown up picture of Seonghwa from Zero: Fever Part 1. His white shirt is open at the chest, his lips a bright poisonous red. The light on the horizon grows brighter. Someone sings It’s not really work, it’s the power to charm! and he’s staring at a fisherman’s net, tangled in which is Seonghwa in his toffee-blond hair and a purple mermaid’s tail.
‘I try,’ he says. His tailfin wags.
Hongjoong wakes up in a cold sweat. He doesn’t sleep in his bed again and commandeers the couch indefinitely. It becomes a running joke among their fans.
8. ‘Should You Desire Your Bandmate?’ or ‘The Troubles Of Helming A Ship You Don’t Want To Be On’
Caveat: The sex symbol is historically the possessor of the power to seduce and come away untouched, remain whole even as bigger men fall. It is above morals, absolutes, and the great game of profit and loss. It does not think, does not reason, does not question why it’s clad in scraps in freezing weather. It exists only to seduce, tailored to the eye of its beholder. As such, it is inaccessible, and therefore, also an ideal. In a sense it does not exist at all. Like the corpse of a dead saint, it presents the conundrum of the profane impinging upon the world of the sacred: should the saint be buried like all other men? Should the sex symbol be sullied with hands that have the potential to destroy the fantasy upon which the status of the sex symbol rests? The adoring follower dreams of the saint’s attention and packages eros within dedication. To consummate love with the saint is blasphemy. The sex symbol commands the viewer’s attention in much the same way and through inaccessibility, elevates the profane to the sacred. The sex symbol is the saint with whom love can be consummated. Indeed, it is manufactured to appeal to the viewer’s basest desires. However, the result is unintentional sanctification. The sex symbol, that tantalising dream manufactured for mass appeal, gains apotheosis due to its universal availability. Everyone’s public god is someone’s private god. Desire eats itself and grows fat on its own imagination. The sex symbol becomes a sacred symbol.
9. Leader
They put San in a crop top and it doesn’t bother Hongjoong at all and that in turn terrifies him. San goes about in his pink hair and washboard abs, doing infuriating body rolls onstage and collecting millions of views on fancams and it’s fine, it’s alright, it’s good . It’s proving to be their big break. Hongjoong looks at himself. He likes the ponytail extensions. He fiddles with them until the makeup artist smacks his hands away and snitches to the hair stylist on him.
10. ‘Settling for Less’ or ‘How I Learned to Be Nice Without Compromising on Coolness’
Seonghwa’s hair is longer than it’s ever been. The pants are loose and the shirt sticks to his skin like glue. He’s doing a lot of things with his arms. Hongjoong has the sudden urge to watch a movie when they wrap up filming. He settles down on his couch and pulls up Netflix on his laptop.
There’s the noise of feet padding behind him. “You’re not sleeping?” Seonghwa is in his pajamas. His face is glistening with a thick layer of an overnight hydrating mask. He walks over to the edge of the couch and waits there.
Hongjoong blows air out of his nose and gestures beside him.
Margot Robbie is gorgeous, he thinks at some point past the 1 hour mark. The conflict is slow to develop but it’s not what he’s here for. He’s pretty certain by now that he only put on the film to ground himself. Something substantial and meaty for his flailing hands. He doesn’t remember when he got so lost. Next to him, Seonghwa is avidly reading the Korean subtitles, mouthing them to himself with a furrowed brow. Hongjoong rubs a finger between his eyebrows.
“Your styling this comeback,” he mutters and Seonghwa looks up, confused. Hongjoong nods at his hair as if appraising it only now, as if he hadn’t spent the past week turning on coals trying to figure out how to compliment Seonghwa without sounding like— like what? He feels the weight of the day bearing down on him. Suddenly, sincerity is not only scary but also impossible to convey adequately.
Seonghwa is still looking at him. “You look nice,” Hongjoong finishes airily. “Styling’s nice this time around.”
His stomach turns when Seonghwa smiles, pleased. “Thank you. I like it too.”
A while later, Margot Robbie stomps Leonardo DiCaprio in the face with the sole of her expensive shoe. It occurs to Hongjoong that she’s quite angry, actually. He wonders how he missed that the first time.