“You smell.”

Seunghoon sticks out his tongue at Hayi, and she laughs from where she’s sitting on the belt of the treadmill, like their coaches have told them a thousand times not to because it apparently ruins the machine. He’s sprawled out, upside down, on several of the large exercise balls and dumbbells, long limbs tumbling everywhere, and he’s quite positive that if he tries to extract his left foot, the rack of skipping ropes and exercise bands will come down upon him with the fury of a thousand suns, so in the interest of preventing internal bleeding and broken collar bones he decides not to move.  

Upside-down Hayi snorts as she shifts, tugging at the bun of bleached-blonde hair atop her head, now darker and in thick strands with perspiration, and stretches her legs out in front of her. They’d get screamed at for sure if any of their trainers did come in now, but it’s eleven and most of the staff have long gone home, other than the poor souls held back by the artists to help do recording or other mundane things.

“What time are you heading back?” Seunghoon asks, starting to feel slightly light-headed from being upside down for so long, and Hayi shrugs.

“Don’t know,” she mutters, pulling out and carefully inspecting a single hair which had come loose from the bun. The black is starting to show through in the roots, but Seunghoon doesn’t feel prompted say so. It’s unhealthy to bleach it all the time, and he’s not exactly keen on pushing her to do it again. “When they chase us out I guess. Not like I’m keeping anyone waiting.”

Seunghoon bites his lip and wonders what it must feel like, not having a team waiting for you back at home, floating in and out between different people all the time. But Hayi’s always been a solo artist through and through, even throughout Kpop Star, while Seunghoon’s just been one part of the body, his dancing never enough to compensate for the lack of vocal and rap skills. He needs the rest of Winner to survive, needs Taehyun’s vocals and Mino’s rap to have a chance in the industry at all. Seunghoon’s just an accessory, nice and shiny to have around but never really necessary. The thought of Winner being able to leave him behind without so much as a second thought sinks him into a gradual quicksand depression.

“Stop thinking so much,” Hayi suddenly says lazily, from where she’s lounging like a cat on the treadmill, and Seunghoon snaps out of it at once. “You look constipated.”

“Hm,” Seunghoon replies absently, then catches himself a moment too late. “I-...I don’t look constipated. I look thoughtful. And intelligent.”

Hayi fixes him with a look that’s reminiscent of the power-drill stare their wonderful CEO has a habit of giving them during serious talks, and Seunghoon swallows. Unfortunately for him, he’s upside down, so it comes out like a frightened fish gulp. (which it isn’t, by the way, because she’s at least five years younger than him and the great Lee Seunghoon will not be stared down by a girl five years his junior.)

“What are you thinking about?” Hayi asks. Seunghoon opens his mouth, ready to say something evasive like food or how the perspiration makes such great patterns on your sweatshirt, but the syllables end up forming the vague word, “stuff,” he says with a shrug, and realises he may be wanting to talk about this with her more than he’d like to admit.

Hayi giggles. It’s not really the shy kind of giggle Seunghoon sees blazer and miniskirt-clad schoolgirls on dramas giving when their oppars ask them personal questions, but it isn’t the high happy kind he hears from the others either. It’s sort of sleepy and laid-back, in that morning voice Hayi always has and works rather well, and it lowers his guard, because it shows she’s just as tired of it all as he is.

“Tell me about this stuff,” she gathers her knees to her chest, and Seunghoon wiggles his foot experimentally. When the rack of exercise equipment looming above doesn’t suddenly grow closer at an alarming speed and give him enough bruises to last a lifetime, he slowly gets up, wincing when one of the dumbbells pokes him fiercely in a sensitive area. Hayi giggles again, and he makes a face at her.

“I’ve just been thinking,” Seunghoon mutters, eyes on the floor as he arranges his legs in front of him, fingers tugging down the hem of his sweatshirt.

“About Team B?” Hayi asks, and Seunghoon laughs weakly, because there really is nothing to laugh about when it comes to them.

“You got me,” he says, lowering his gaze again. A silence follows for a while, just like it always does when they talk about Team B.

“You still wear those,” Seunghoon looks up questioningly at Hayi’s words, and she nods towards the rings on his fingers. The friendship bands that Team B had given them. Seunghoon blinks, trying to remember what it’d been like then, and though it’s been ages Seunghoon still feels like it’s yesterday, still finds himself trying to get out of the old habits and into the new mentality of calling themselves Winner, not Team A.

“Yeah,” Seunghoon twists one of the bands absently. He’s been trying not to wear them to exercise in case they get rusty, but most of the time he just forgets to take them off. The others have stopped wearing theirs long ago, but he’s still stuck in the habit of taking them off the dresser and sliding them on the moment he wakes up in the morning. It’s become the only way he can remember them, remember how he’d stepped all over them to get to where he is now, remember every moment he’d shared with them before they’d been split in half, before they fade into another statistic in YG’s black book of doom and he forgets them along with the rest of the world. “It’s...the only way I can show them, you know? That I remember.”

“Your own rebellion,” Hayi laughs again. “To show the industry that you haven’t fully succumbed to its cruel backstabbing claws? To show that no matter what it puts you through, you’ll still remember them and display your friendship on your fingers?”

“Sounds dramatic when you put it like that,” Seunghoon slowly pulls one of them off, the one Hanbin had given him, and visions of impromptu krumping and dance-offs before WIN, before Team A and Team B, flash through his mind. He hasn’t met anyone who’s been able to understand his love for dance and choreography since him. “I just...I wonder what it would’ve been like if we hadn’t gone through that. If that 0.6% was in Team B’s favour, and we’d gone back. I don’t think I would’ve been able to make another shot at the industry, you know,” a hard lump rises in Seunghoon’s throat as the possibility dangles over his head, of going back to Busan a failure. “I wouldn’t have been able to ever get back up from something like that, not after Kpop Star.”

“It worked, didn’t it?” there’s a halfhearted smile on Hayi’s face when Seunghoon looks up, the painful kind that rips little seams in his heart. “Look at you guys. You bagged an endorsement contract. You guys are doing big in your own reality show. You’ve got loads of fans in Korea and Japan, and all before you even debuted. YG-sangjanim knows what he’s doing.”

Seunghoon laughs. It comes out short and bitter, like a bark. “You know that time I met up with the JYP trainees for that battle? I had some time to talk with Jaehyung before we left. He told me, you know, to “take care”, told me I’d changed since the last time he saw me,” Seunghoon draws a shaky breath. “Yeah, they may be less successful than us, but they’re happy. Every single one of them. They know where they’re standing. Even now, every day, I worry about what’s going to happen to me tomorrow. Some things just leave scars in you that never come off, you know? Scars that were caused by the people who were once closest to you. You know how that feels?”

“Yeah,” Hayi says simply. The silence they know so well returns, blanketing the tiny room. Something clenches in Seunghoon’s chest, and he tightens his fingers into fists, his throat swelling painfully in the midst of all the quiet.    

“That time,” Seunghoon says finally, clearing his throat when his voice shakes dangerously. His fingers are intertwining nervously, fidgeting, displaying his uncertainty at how to go about the question for the world to see. “When we had our monthly evaluation and YG-sangjanim had the family vote on our performances…” he trails off here, mind unable to string together the next few words, until he’s only able to choke out one word. “Why?”

“Why’d I vote for you?” Hayi tucks her legs in, eyes on the floor now, fingers tracing patterns on the rough treadmill belt.

“It wasn’t,” Seunghoon swallows again, pushing on bravely because he has to know, or he’ll never be able to let go of it. “It wasn’t because of me, was it?”

“Don’t flatter yourself,” Hayi chuckles drily, and Seunghoon lets out a nervous laugh, both relieved and puzzled. “It was, partly, but I had other reasons.”

“Sharing is caring,” Seunghoon makes little halfhearted heart signs at her, and Hayi smiles.

“It was something about you guys, you know?” she shrugs weakly. “I mean, to be honest, I liked Team B’s performance better, but when I looked at them, I just saw one person. They were of the same mind and everything, but they were so similar, so naturally in sync, it felt like I was watching just one person, and that person was Hanbin. But when I looked at you guys,” Hayi rolled her eyes a little here. “It was like watching a natural disaster. Everyone was so different. You had rookies like Jinwoo-oppa, veterans like Mino-oppa, classic scholars and promoting artists, then you,” she makes a face at Seunghoon. “There was no way it would work out, but if it did,” she sighed a little here. “It’d be amazing, you know? The chance that a bunch of chaos like you guys would miraculously be able to click and produce something beautiful. It’s just like something YG would push.”

“Something the public would push,” Seunghoon mutters, fist clenching so hard his nails are biting red crescents into the skin of his palm.

“It’s a quality,” Hayi says softly. “It’s something of yours. Something that belongs to Team A exclusively. Don’t beat yourself up over it. If you happen to do it and the public happens to like it, it isn’t your fault, is it?”

When Seunghoon remains mute, Hayi speaks again, quieter this time.

“I didn’t want to vote.”

Seunghoon looks up, just in time to see the guilt flash through Hayi’s large eyes. “It didn’t feel right, you know? We’re equals. We were both Top Ten rejects from Kpop Star. Just because YG decided to push me out first and what I did happened to appeal to the general public doesn’t give me the right to decide your fate.”

“He seemed to trust your judgement,” Seunghoon mutters, turning one of the rings over in his hand (the one Jinhwan had given him, if he wasn’t wrong). “I guess he was right in the end, wasn’t he?”

“You must’ve hated me then,” Hayi laughs a little, a short, dead laugh that’s ridden with quiet regret. “Sitting at his right hand holding that stupid placard, all ready to judge whatever you were going to perform and decide if you were better or worse than the other team.”

“I didn’t,” Seunghoon says quite honestly. “It’s the boss’ call, right? You had to do what you had to do.”

“It’s nice you think that way,” the edges of Hayi’s full lips tilt up in her sleepy smile. “Thanks.”

“Anything for you,” Seunghoon tries to joke, and the atmosphere lightens slightly, as Hayi laughs, a real, albeit brief laugh. It’s the only thing he’s good for now, to make sure the world stays entertained, and that they know it’s Winner who’s entertaining them.

“Take care of yourself,” Hayi says suddenly, shooting him a soft smile that’s way too mature for a face like hers. “I have to agree with Jaehyung-oppa; you have changed, but he didn’t mention all the good ways it’s happened to you too. I mean, this competition’s depressed us all, especially you guys, but most of the time I feel like you’ve...matured, you know. You’re learning stuff, like how to work in a team, being responsible for choreography and dance, pulling the whole of Winner forward by laughing and smiling so much on television.”

Seunghoon chuckles awkwardly, rubbing the nape of his neck nervously. “Take care of yourself too. I mean- fame and glory all so quickly at sixteen, don’t suddenly change on us,” he laughs to cover up for his lack of eloquence, hoping he’d managed to get his point across. “Don’t ever stop being you, you know. You aren’t the typical South Korean female idol, yeah, but I think you’re pretty solid the way you are.”

“Way to talk to a girl,”  Hayi smirks, and Seunghoon scoffs, secretly relieved that he’d managed to say it while she was still listening to him at all.

“What is it they always say in dramas?” Seunghoon pretends to think about it. “Oh yeah, “it isn’t safe for you to walk out all on your own at this time of the night Hayi-ah, I should walk you home”. Is that any better?”

“Great! You’d almost beat Minho oppa at charming the ladies!” Hayi says sarcastically, but gets up to pack her bag anyway, fully tugging the elastic from her hair and picking up her water bottle.

Seunghoon grins as he grabs his own water bottle, dumping it and his towel into his knapsack and swinging it over his shoulders.

“How is that any way to talk to your oppa?” he decides to give her a taste of her own medicine as he holds open the door, and Hayi immediately transforms, large eyes turning docile, lips pulling themselves into a pout.

“Oops, I mean,” She says in comic timidness in a voice several octaves higher than her usual one, raising her fists to her cheeks. “Buing buing?”

Seunghoon snorts abrasively, breaking the atmosphere. “Your aegyo is worse than mine.”

“Says something about you, doesn’t it,” Hayi rolls her eyes, dropping the facade as she walks out the door, Seunghoon following at her heels.

“Tsk, careful, apparently I’ve got a great desire for women,” Seunghoon grins, flipping the light switch off as they walk out. “And I’ll be a great husband in the future too.”

“With a slightly lacking quality,” Hayi adds neatly.

“So you are watching it!” Seunghoon’s face breaks into an even wider smile at Hayi’s apparent knowledge of the Winner TV episode. “Not too busy now for your oppars yet, I see.”

“What are you talking about,” Hayi laughs, that same velvety, layered laugh that Seunghoon knows so well, before she continues, her voice softer now. “Of course I watched it.”

The smile on Seunghoon’s face mellows slightly, and he takes a bigger step to catch up with Hayi, nudging her gently with his elbow. She isn’t wearing heels or insoles now, so it just barely grazes her shoulder, and she looks up at him questioningly.

“Thanks,” he says, beaming, and Hayi rolls her eyes in embarrassment. Seunghoon’s pleased to note the flush on her face, and mentally congratulates himself.

“You’re such a softie sometimes,” she mutters, prodding him back, and Seunghoon chuckles when her elbow merely meets his with a pathetic poke.

“All the better to charm you with,” he says brightly, and Hayi laughs.

“All the better,” she agrees, and they spend the rest of the walk in a comfortable silence until they come to a slow halt in front of the YG dorms. Seunghoon stands with Hayi for a while then, just staring up at the dull building. He can see the lights on where Seungyoon’s supposed to be sleeping, probably composing again, can see the lights pouring out of Minho’s window waver slightly as he practices some dance routine. The girls’ side is dark- 2NE1’s probably still at the main building rehearsing for their world tour, and Soohyun and Chanhyuk are fast asleep.

“You sure we know what we’re doing?” Seunghoon asks after a while, and though it’s an abstract question he’s pretty sure Hayi knows what he means.

“Nope,” Hayi shrugs painfully, but there’s a steadiness in her voice that gives him hope when she next speaks. “As long as we all do it together, though, right?”

Seunghoon gives a short, hollow laugh. “Yeah.”

They stand like that for a few more moments before Hayi turns to him slowly. “Well, night,” she says quietly.

“Night,” Seunghoon pulls a smile on his face, just for her, and though she doesn’t return it, Seunghoon can see the gratitude beaming in her eyes.

They walk separate ways after that, but there’s peace in a vague part of Seunghoon’s mind as he climbs into bed that night, that blankets him in a layer of security he’s come to treasure lately, and he falls asleep as soon as his head touches the pillow, before he can wonder about what he’s doing, where they’ll go next, what’ll happen to them tomorrow.

Maybe, he decides somewhere along the gradual descent into what would later be a deep, dreamless sleep, staying won’t be so hard, just as long as they’re there to stay with him.

a/n: yeahhh friendship fluff woohoo \o/ so um please comment! feedback would be extremely nice :D yayyy