It was a relief to Lain when the lights finally dimmed.
He followed Tae backstage, the stylist stopping him on the way to hand him a t-shirt. He slipped it on immediately, so grateful that he gripped her shoulders. "Thanks Noona, you're a lifesaver." Leaving her to recover, he went into the dressing room.
Everyone was already there. Haneul was laughing, and when he spotted Lain he came to him and clapped a hand on his shoulder.
"We support you, man."
Lain was confused. "What?"
"In your alternative career as a stripper. We're not judgy prudes." True. You're juvenile pervs.
The manager hurried in at that moment, clasping her hands together. "You did well, boys. I was just a bit uncertain about the tension escalator, I'll admit, you all haven't had much experience."
Haneul snorted. "Yeah, the keyword here being experience."
Geez, he's obsessed with finding double entendres. Lain rolled his eyes towards the ceiling. "But you did well," she continued, "the fan cafe is exploding with comments!" She showed Ju-Kan the screen of her laptop and left. He sat down and began to scroll.
"So, they're shipping us now," he said to Haneul. "HanJu." He scrolled some more and did a double take. "Hey, they're saying you'll top me!"
That was understandable, thought Lain. Haneul had been the one making most of the moves. An enraged Ju-Kan tried to shout over Haneul's howling laughter, "There's no way you're topping me! What the hell, I'm older than you!"
"What has your age got to do with anything?" said Lain innocently. It was nice to have someone else bear the brunt of this nonsense for once. Of course it would revert to him eventually, with all the juicy new material the tension escalator had supplied.
"Age is just a number," quipped Haneul, "What you should decide by is what you fantasize about me." Ju-Kan jerked up from the chair and chased Haneul around the room, Haneul cackling all the while. When he caught up with him he smacked him across the shoulders. Haneul went, "Hyung, hit me more!" Ju-Kan cornered him and play-punched him while he was still singing, "Hyung, I've been a bad boy!"
That's when Lain noticed the stylist standing unobtrusively at the doorway, her phone in her hand, recording. And so did Haneul and Ju-Kan. They sobered up at that.
Ju-Kan sat back down, Haneul joined him and they scanned the comments for a couple of minutes, absorbed. Then Haneul said, "Hey, how come the Laintae ship is more popular than ours?"
"Well, they're each better-looking than the both of us put together," said Ju-Kan absently.
Haneul brightened. "Dude, they're all like "Omo Omo Laintae Omo Omo the height difference is getting to meeee!" He said, attempting a poor imitation of a high-pitched fangirl. Ju-Kan guffawed. Lain tried to ignore them, but then Ju-Kan said, "Haha, they're fighting about whether Lain's a seme or a power bottom!"
Lain's throat went dry. Even though they were doing a commentary for his benefit, to rile him up, he rose to the bait. "But why?"
"Well, you're taller than Tae so you should be top. And now they've seen that you have abs, you should be top. But you're girly-pretty like a uke so you should be bottom. And they haven't seen whether Tae's got abs or not so they think everyone should rest their case 'til then."
Haneul grinned, "They're fetishizing you two. The height difference is getting to meeeee!" He repeated, shrill and exaggerated. He and Ju-Kan cackled together.
"Okay, now we've gotten a general idea of the comments, let's check out all the fanfiction they're linking," said Haneul once they'd tired of that. "They all seem to be... drooling inspiration now." He smirked from Lain to Tae.
"I bet they've written plenty of hardcore explicit ones about you two," said Lain sullenly. "Especially as you went all 'extra' up on stage."
"Look who's talking."
"Urgh!" Lain couldn't stand it anymore, he stormed off to look for the manager. They were supposed to take the van back to their dorm that very night. The only point of comfort for him was that he knew that very soon, Naver and YouTube would be plastered with the 'HanJu' moment that had just gone down, thanks to the stylist. And it'd serve them right.
He'd do what they were doing now, he'd read what the fans said and make digs at those two. So he daydreamed, as he dialed the manager's number and held the phone to his ear.
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