just feel the rock

Posted originally on the Archive of Our Own at http://archiveofourown.org/works/52574281.

Rating: Teen And Up Audiences

Archive Warning: No Archive Warnings Apply
Category: M/M
Fandom: Stray Kids (Band)
Relationship: Han Jisung | Han/Lee Minho | Lee Know
Characters: Han Jisung | Han, Lee Minho | Lee Know
Additional Tags: Alternate Universe - Rock Band, Feelings Realization, minho is
oblivious, jisung is also oblivious, Drabble
Language: English
Stats: Published: 2023-12-27 Words: 2,433 Chapters: 1/1
 just feel the rock
by honeyeaters

Summary

“We’ve got one last song for you tonight,” Jisung says and the crowd lets out a collective
groan. Jisung nods knowingly, putting his hands up in surrender. “I know, I know,” he laughs,
and the sound trickles into Minho’s belly and gives him butterflies. What the hell is wrong
with him tonight? Maybe the pre-show shot that he, Jisung, Felix, and Chan took was laced
with something.

“Thank you again, you’ve been great. This is ‘Volcano.’”

OR: Minho learns he has a crush on his best friend at the most inconvenient time possible.

Notes

Hi! I guess this is my debut?

Just a little drabble for the amazing @boddarz as part of our secret santa

See the end of the work for more notes

“I have something to tell you,” Jisung says into the microphone, strumming a singular C
chord and letting it bleed loudly through the low-quality speakers at the small venue.

Minho smirks. He knows what's coming. Jisung has the same speech every night, the same
ending ment built into every stop of the tour like clockwork.

“You’ve been the best crowd we’ve seen yet,” Jisung declares, another C chord ringing, and
the audience of about 800 goes wild.

Minho smirks again, catching Jisung’s eye when the other looks back and raises his
eyebrows. They most certainly were not the best crowd yet. The energy and enthusiasm had
fluctuated between too much and too little; either completely dead throughout a song, or on
the opposite end, Minho had witnessed security break up a physical fight when some people
got a bit too rowdy.

But it didn’t matter. There was one song left, so that meant Jisung was going to tell them they
were his favorite crowd, charisma dripping from his lips like he’s made of it. Minho thinks
that if you were to cut Jisung open, he would ooze gold like the gods of mythos, every part of
his insides matching the flashiness of his outsides.

Minho slightly adjusts the tuning of his bass, plucks a singular string as Jisung goes on. The
dodgy lighting system of the venue glitches out for a moment, leaving a lonely spotlight
centering Jisung perfectly. Minho feels his breath catch for a second.

Jisung really was golden. Every piece of the light casts him just right, outlining his every
feature in liquid sunlight. His smile is so bright it could start wars, splitting his face like a
canyon, and Minho understands how every crowd falls in love with him. How every night,
Jisung stands on stage and wraps all these people around his finger, weaves them through his
hands and pulls them in, whispering lyrics in their ears and convincing each individual
person that they are for them.

Sometimes, Minho falls for it too. Lets himself give to the weight that is Han Jisung and all
that he is, tries to see it from the perspective of people who don’t know him as their goofy,
stupidly talented best friend, but as a god, and he gets the appeal.

But after the show, when Jisung has the remnants of eyeliner smudged around his eyes,
pajama pants and hoodie pulled on after a shower, black nails chipped and fingers rubbed
sore from sliding up and down the neck of his guitar, that's when Minho looks at Jisung and
senses trouble. The inkling of a feeling made bigger by the brush of skin on skin. Jisung will
cuddle into Minho in his tiny little bunk on the tour bus, whispering to Minho what a great
job he did, how he’s so happy that they were in this together.

Minho will inhale him and all that he is, the scent of pine and something sickly sweet
entering his airways, and will tell him there’s no one else he’d rather be doing this with.

The lights fill the whole stage once more and Minho snaps out of it. He needs to get it
together. Jisung is his best friend, his rock, his everything.

“We’ve got one last song for you tonight,” Jisung says and the crowd lets out a collective
groan. Jisung nods knowingly, putting his hands up in surrender. “I know, I know,” he laughs,
and the sound trickles into Minho’s belly and gives him butterflies. What the hell is wrong
with him tonight? Maybe the pre-show shot that he, Jisung, Felix, and Chan took was laced
with something.

“Thank you again, you’ve been great. This is ‘Volcano.’”

The first time Jisung had played the song for Minho, Minho had cried. Jisung had looked
surprised, knowing that crying isn’t something that happens to Minho often, but the song had
hit him so directly in the gut, it was his body’s only immediate response.

The song talked about unconditional love. Wanting someone, loving them so bad that you
would do anything for them, let them do anything to you, and know that the love is
everlasting, unbreakable.

At first, Minho had gently prodded Jisung for details, trying to figure out where the song
came from, who or what it was for. But Jisung had merely muttered something under his
breath about it coming from some tv show or just a random story he created in his head and
that was that.

To Minho’s horror, Jisung didn’t want to put it on their first album, but Minho insisted. And
because Jisung trusted Minho, it became their album closer. An underground hit in their local
music scene that started them on their path, made them enough royalties and gained them
enough fans to organize their first tour across the country, playing every small venue that
would have them.

Before the song begins, Jisung looks to Minho, and then Felix on lead guitar and Chan on
drums, signaling he’s ready to go. Chan taps his sticks together three times and they start in
unison, the crowd going wild for the opening chords.

Jisung grins. Minho doesn’t think he’ll ever see him get used to it, the way people sing his
words back to him. Jisung looked a little starstruck every time, like he couldn’t quite believe
that people knew the lyrics, or felt impacted by them. Minho hopes that someday Jisung sees
it, how special he is. How he is not only one of a kind, but once in a lifetime.

Jisung starts singing, low and vulnerable, eyes closed as he loses himself in it. The light
flickers out again, and the world disappears. The world is only Jisung as he performs.

“I'll protect you, it's okay to hurt, I'll embrace the wounds you shed,” Jisung sings. Minho
didn’t even realize he had started moving, but he’s now only about a foot away from Jisung,
his body being pulled into his orbit like it always seems to do. It’s like the universe has
decided that Minho and Jisung’s natural positions are next to each other, and it picks them up
like chess pieces or ragdolls and drops them in each other’s vicinity. Like one cannot exist
without the other.
“It's okay if everything burns down. Even if I go back hundreds of times, my choice is always
you.” Jisung locks his eyes on Minho, his expression is serious, brows furrowed and eyes
containing something Minho can’t quite pinpoint. Jisung looks at him this way sometimes
when he thinks Minho isn’t looking back. But he’s always looking. In a crowd of hundreds,
or thousands, or tens of thousands, Minho is always looking for Jisung.

For a moment, Minho feels like Jisung is singing the words to him and to him only, but then
the lights kick in again and Minho is reminded of the crowd. Reminded that the words are not
for him, but for them.

Minho feels an ache in his chest, a tightness like someone has wound a fishing line around
his heart, reeling it in so hard that it threatens to burst through his ribs and flesh, blow him
open like a confetti cannon.

The world stops, and for a second, Minho thinks the lights have gone out again, but then his
eyes refocus and he realizes that the light wasn’t painting Jisung golden, he was. Focusing on
him until he was the only thing Minho saw, until he was the center of the universe. Minho
realizes that the difference between him seeing the world and seeing only Jisung was null; to
him it was the same thing.

Fuck. Minho thinks. He’s in love with his best friend.

Jisung is still staring at him, the look in his eyes unwavering. “I'm the drought, you're rain,
I'm paper, you're a poem,” he sings. He’s beautiful. He’s so beautiful Minho doesn’t know
what to do. So he ceases to do anything.

Minho stops playing his bass. Removes it from around his shoulders, sets it on the ground,
and walks off stage.

He hears the crowd booing but it’s muffled by the sound of blood rushing in his ears. Minho
can’t breathe, can’t see, can’t think. The world buzzes around him, blurring in and out of
focus. He squeezes his eyes shut, but all he can see on the back of his lids is Jisung.

Jisung, Jisung, Jisung. His brain says to him over, and over again.

He can’t believe he didn’t see this coming, can’t believe he let his feelings bundle inside of
him like this without ever even trying to untangle them. He’s in love with Jisung. He loves
Jisung so much it hurts. Everything that he had excused as them being ‘platonic soulmates’
feels ridiculous to him now, a lie his own mind told himself to save him from heartbreak.

Minho feels his heart breaking a little bit now. He feels a piece of it rip off, stab him through
the chest, and feels himself start to bleed in the form of fresh, hot tears.

“Minho, what the hell?” he hears Jisung say from behind him. Jisung grabs his shoulder and
whips him around. Minho catches a flash of anger on his face before it’s replaced with
concern. Minho knows he must look like a puffy mess. He feels his face heat and snot pool
underneath his nose. Great.
Jisung reaches up to cup Minho’s face. “What’s wrong, baby?”

Minho chokes out a sob at the sound of the familiar pet name. The weight of everything feels
so heavy that Minho decides he can’t stand anymore, so he sinks his way down the wall, hugs
his knees and makes himself as small as possible. Maybe if he curls in enough, he can curl in
on himself completely, poof out of existence and into some micro universe where can
befriend bacteria and those weird little microscopic bear things.

Jisung joins him on the floor, crossing his legs and caressing Minho’s arm while waiting
patiently for him to calm down. Minho can hear Felix and Chan on stage, trying to talk down
the crowd and assuring them that everything is probably fine. Great, Minho probably
sabotaged the trajectory of their career while also ruining his lifelong friendship with Jisung.

When Minho’s breathing finally evens out, tears run dry, he rubs his nose with the back of his
hand, not caring about how gross he probably looks. It’s just Jisung. The one person Minho is
so comfortable with he doesn’t think he could ever feel embarrassed or ashamed. He doesn’t
feel that way about his new revelation. No, he just feels sad. Feels like he’s grieving
something he hasn’t lost yet.

Minho decides he has nothing to lose. “Who is it about, Jisung? Volcano.”

Jisung’s eyebrows shoot up in surprise before furrowing. He tilts his head in confusion.
Minho has always loved how expressive he is, how he leaves every thought and feeling on
his face. He wonders if Jisung can read Minho as well as Minho can read him. Maybe that’s
why he let himself repress his feelings for so long, a fear that Jisung would take one look at
him and see it all. Minho wonders if he can see it now buried under his tear stained cheeks
and red nose.

“You know what it’s about Minho,” Jisung smiles softly, laughing in the form of air being
pushed out of his nose. “You sing it with me every night.”

“Not what,” Minho says. He needs an answer. Needs to know who inspired Jisung to write a
song that makes Minho ache and burn in the way that he is. Needs to know who Jisung feels
about in the same way that Minho feels about Jisung. “Who.”

Jisung freezes. His expression is wiped clean, not a shred of anything for Minho to latch onto
and analyze, pull apart or uncover. Something flashes in his eyes, and Minho can’t tell if it's
anger or relief or fear. Maybe it’s all of them at once.

Jisung inhales, holds his breath for one, two, three seconds before releasing it slowly. He
looks like he’s come to some realization, the same look from before in his eyes but wearing a
different costume. Minho thinks it looks like bravery. Determination maybe. Maybe
something else entirely.

“It’s about you, Min.” Jisung says so quietly that Minho is reading his lips more than
anything else. “I wrote it about you.”

Minho stops breathing for a moment. Jisung looks at him in the way that he does when he
thinks Minho isn’t looking. But he knows he’s looking at him this time. Looks him dead in
the eye and Minho finally unravels the look, knows what it is like he knows his own name.
It’s love.

Before he knows it Minho is grabbing Jisung by his collar, pulling him towards him and
kissing him hard. And this is why the universe was always pulling them together. Minho had
been circling Jisung’s orbit not realizing he was supposed to be crashing into it, colliding
with Jisung’s star head on.

Jisung is surprised at first, but then smiles into the kiss, holds Minho’s face in his hands and
kisses him deeper, prodding at Minho’s lips with his tongue until Minho opens up and lets
him slip inside. He tastes like sunshine and liquid stardust, and something tangy and metallic.
Gold Minho realizes, he tastes golden.

When they break apart, they’re both breathless, smiling wide. Jisung is absolutely glowing as
he looks at Minho, like he never wants to look at anything else ever. Minho wonders what
color he looks like to Jisung. What hue did love paint him in Jisung’s eyes?

“Is it too soon to say I love you?” Jisung asks, giggling as his cheeks start to turn pink.

You already have. Minho thinks. Every night that Jisung got on stage and sang that song, he
was declaring to the world that he was in love, telling Minho in his own special way.

“No,” Minho smiles. “No, it’s not. I love you too.”

They make their way back onstage, hand in hand. The crowd doesn’t look happy but Minho
doesn’t care. He loves Jisung and Jisung loves him. That’s all that matters.

Felix and Chan look at them, look at each other, something knowing in both of their gazes
and they both break out in huge grins. Chan flashes them both two thumbs up.
Minho laughs, picks up his bass as Jisung apologizes.

This time when they play Volcano, Jisung doesn’t look anywhere but at him.
End Notes

I had so much fun with this little prompt :')

I have a lot of reallllllllly long things in the works so keep an eye out!

you can follow me on twt @chronosung :)

Please drop by the Archive and comment to let the creator know if you enjoyed their work!