Archive of Our Own ^beta

1.

When Changbin first started working out, all 120 pounds of him soaking wet, he was miserable.

He was fit, yes, because all the dieting and the dancing didn’t let him or anyone else be anything less, but Changbin remembers how his body was in a constant state of ache from his feet to his ankles to his fucking neck those first agonizing weeks.   

Then, only three things kept him motivated to drag his skinny ass to the gym and in no particular order it was how he was sick of being the butt of every ‘visual of the group’ joke, Chan’s earnest insistence at helping Changbin even when Changbin didn’t want to on his bad days, and Hyunjin’s tight-lipped ‘thank you’ each time he was praised for his looks and nothing else.

Then, he didn’t do it for himself, at least not wholly, selfishly in the way Chan gently encouraged him to.

It took Changbin a while, a good fucking while until he really started to get into it, until he slowly started to actually enjoy and look forwards to the few hours he spent at the gym weekly, but it was like once he hit his stride, once he had tangible proof of how every callus, every aching muscle, and every drop of sweat left him feeling stronger – and not just in a physical way, but a mental way, too – he felt like he was finding himself all over again.

Now, it was Changbin who would drag any and all willing members of the group to the gym, help them plan their workouts, give them recommendations for the best protein powders and supplements, figure out sustainable eating plans, and encourage them to keep at it when they’re down or doubting themselves.

Changbin could now say with certainty that he lacked at 18 and 19 that he was happy with the way he presented himself to the world, and it made all the difference because yes, he may have started this all for reasons that were mainly external then, but now it simply gave him an edge since not a lot of people were willing to slyly shit on someone that looked like they could bench press thrice their weight without breaking a sweat.

But, most of all – and most importantly, a lesson he had finally learned – it just made him happy with himself.  

Nowadays, he actually had gym dates planned with nearly everyone in the group – minus Hyunjin who would wail and do a whole production of a sailor being made to walk the plank, and Seungmin who maintained that spite is what gave him his impressive stamina and core strength and not pumping iron – and so, on his way to see if Chan was up and ready to go to the gym, Changbin is feeling pretty good.

It’s early but they had schedules for later in the day, and when Changbin had asked Chan the night before if he wanted to come with and get in their hours in the morning, the older man had agreed even if it was a little distracted because he had been on his phone.

Changbin is dressed and ready, gym bag packed and left in the living room, and he knocks on Chan’s closed door with a low, “hyung, shall we go?” because he did not want to be the unfortunate schmuck to accidentally wake up Jisung or Hyunjin who took their sleep very, very seriously on the days they got late schedules.

Except, there’s no response from the other side of Chan’s door and Changbin knocks again, just a little louder, and pulls out his phone to see if Chan had texted him about not being able to make it or something.

There were no unread texts from Chan, and Changbin knocks again and tries the door which opens to an empty room, a made bed, and no Chan in sight.

Changbin frowns, staring at Chan’s pristine bed that didn’t even look slept in which was weird because he knows that Chan took an early night off, leaving the studio before him and Jisung, telling them that he was going to catch up on some sleep.

Maybe he went to the other apartment, Changbin thinks, closing Chan’s door behind him and going to collect his bag. He knows that Felix had baked Chan’s favorite cookies so maybe he must’ve gone there and crashed with one of them, which wasn’t unusual for any of them.

They may be living separately right now, split into four, but with how much time they still manage to spend at each other’s places it made it feel like they were all still living together. Hell, a few days ago, Minho had come in to root through their clean laundry and grab one of Chan’s and Hyunjin's hoodies before leaving without a word, not even acknowledging Hyunjin and Changbin who had been watching one of the younger man’s dramas on the TV.

Still, Changbin calls Chan after he’s outside of the apartment and waiting for his cab, but it goes straight to voicemail. He debates between calling one of their maknae’s to see if Chan was there but ultimately discards that idea because he doesn’t want to wake them up so early on a day that they can sleep in.

Changbin doesn’t even think of calling Minho because the older man had his own little rituals for early mornings and he’d hate to interrupt him in between.

Once Changbin’s cab arrives, he gets in and in five minutes, he’s getting out, paying the man, and walking into the lobby, bowing to the receptionists there who bows back to him in recognition. Changbin makes his way to the staff elevators, uses his card to access it, and hopes that wherever Chan is, he’s at least getting in some extra rest because out of all of them, Chan was the one that always needed it the most.

Except, when Changbin walks into the gym, bag slapping at the outside of his thigh, strap cutting into his shoulder a little, lo and behold, Chan is already there looking like he’d been working out for a while and he’s not alone.

Minho is with him and they’re both straddling the two ends of a barbell bench facing each other while Chan helped Minho unwrap boxing tape from around his knuckles. They’re talking, or at least, Minho is and Chan was nodding along, so focused on the wrappings around Minho’s hands that he doesn’t even raise his head like Minho does when Changbin actually walks inside instead of hovering at the entrance like a vampire waiting for an invitation.

Minho’s lips curl up in that cute little smile that makes Changbin suppress the urge to coo and squish his cheeks simply because he knows Minho wouldn’t hesitate to bite off his fingers, bones and all, and Chan only looks up because Minho must’ve stopped mid-sentence, following his line of sight until he’s giving Changbin a sheepish smile.

“Hyuuung,” Changbin whines, loud and unashamed because it was early enough that it’s just the three of them there, dripping enough aegyo that Minho’s endeared smile twists into one of disgust in a second. “Channie hyung, I thought that you and I were supposed to go to the gym today! I tried calling you and everything, but when it went to voicemail, I just thought that you knocked out in the other dorm because Yongbokkie said he made you those cookies!”

Chan looks genuinely contrite but Minho was giving Changbin a look like he was a wad of gum under his shoe which made Changbin happier because the more disgusted Minho looked in the face of Changbin’s aegyo, the more metaphorical inches Changbin feels he gains.

“Ah, shit Changbin,” Chan tells him once he’s standing in front of the older man, Minho shooting him a scathing look when Changbin accidentally-on-purpose drops his bag on top of Minho’s foot. “I’m sorry, but I did fall asleep there, and I was gonna come back to get you but, um…”

Minho picks up where Chan trails off, one of his hands still half-wrapped and cradled between Chan’s, darting up with the free one to twist Changbin’s nipple with startling fucking accuracy, making him screech because it hurt like a motherfucker.

Minho doesn’t let go of it even when Changbin tries to curve his body away from the older man’s iron grip, and Minho’s expression stays so pleasant while Changbin starts to tear up because it feels like Minho’s two seconds away from literally ripping his poor right nipple off as he grabs Minho’s wrist to push him away.

Minho doesn’t let him go until Changbin is literally on his knees on the ground, nipple numb and pec aching, babbling apologies for dropping his bag on his foot. Minho asks him if he seriously thinks that’s what he should be apologizing for. Changbin whimpers out a shaky, uncertain yes. Minho smiles at him, sweet and toothy, tells him to think again. Keeps his nipple hostage between his thumb and index finger, letting go only when Changbin apologizes for making the older man share his oxygen with him so early in the morning. 

Chan is so used to all of this that by the time Changbin slumps to the floor with both hands holding his right tit protectively, resting against the outside of Minho’s thigh with the older man’s fingers now gently, tenderly carding through his hair, Chan is done unwrapping Minho’s knuckles.

“That hurt,” Changbin mumbles, enjoying Minho’s gentle ministrations, closing his eyes while he pats at his own right pec to soothe the ache. Chan reaches out with a foot to gently nudge Changbin’s knee in quiet commiseration and Changbin sighs happily when Minho starts pressing the pads of his fingers into Changbin’s scalp in soothing circles.

“Of course, it hurt,” Minho says, tone fond. “If I was touching your tits angling for a taste, then I wouldn’t have made it hurt. Much.”  

Changbin makes a face at that, craning his neck sideways and up so that Minho can see the full extent of his disgust. Chan giggles, wheezy and high-pitched, ears a flaming red. Minho just smiles down at Changbin like butter won’t melt, continuing to pet his hair and his head like Changbin was a fussy toddler he was indulging for his own entertainment.  

“You’re nasty,” Changbin informs Minho seriously, angling his head to the side so Minho’s fingers can get that part too.

“That’s just your dry spell making you jealous, Changbinnie,” Minho coos and Changbin perks up in surprise. Chan clears his throat but Changbin is now fully invested because.

“Shut up. You got laid? Fucking when?”

Minho snorts down at him, rolling his eyes, never stopping his attention on Changbin’s head, even if Changbin’s right pec was still very much smarting.  

“I’ve been getting laid,” Minho informs him, sliding his hand out of Changbin’s hair to cup his face fleetingly, sweetly before he gets up and off the bench he was straddling. Changbin gawps up at the older man because holy shit was this news to him, and–

“Been?” Changbin asks, aching pec forgotten in the wake of such prime gossip. “Like, it’s a continuous thing?”

Minho stretches, going up on his toes, hands reaching high, popping his spine. His tee shirt rides up and there, with Changbin’s low vantage point, a glaring red-purple mark just on the side of his belly button peeks in and out of view incriminatingly.

Chan is silent and Changbin thinks that this must be news to their leader too, and once Minho relaxes, he gives Changbin and Chan a lazy smile, eyes cutely scrunched up which was always a danger sign to the people that really knew him.

“I’ve had one of the best producers in the industry crying on my cock for the past year, Binnie-yah,” Minho says and Changbin chokes on his spit. Chan makes a little pained sound and Changbin has no words, head empty, all of his brain cells on freeze.

Minho bends down a little to pat the side of Changbin’s face condescendingly, smiles in that wicked-sweet way of his, straightens up, wishes him and Chan a good workout, and walks away, humming to himself.

Changbin is still sort of glitching when Minho turns around halfway across the spacious gym with that same cute smile that has Changbin mentally bracing himself in a Pavlovian response.

“They’ve got prettier tits than you, and I only make it hurt when they ask me to, nicely,” Minho imparts one last devastating attack on Changbin’s psyche – poor Chan sounds like he’s having an aneurysm on the bench behind Changbin – and turns back around, disappearing into the locker rooms without so much as a backward glance.  

It’s all empty speech bubbles for Changbin as he stares after Minho in a mixture of awe and disgust – really, the only person who could out-crude Jisung was Minho and their friendship just made so much sense like that – Chan whispering out a mortified “oh my fucking God,” that Changbin can get behind a hundred percent.

Oh, my fucking God indeed.

…

2.

Felix had, to put it bluntly, had a bitch of a day.  

And he had known that it was truly going to be one for the books from the moment he had opened his eyes to Seungmin shaking him awake, asking him why he wasn’t dressed because they were going to be picked up in ten minutes by the managers for a shoot down south and doesn’t he want to at least take a shower before they go?

It turns out that Felix hadn’t been diligent enough in plugging his phone in to charge, the cable having gotten loose from the base, and his phone had died in the middle of the night leading him to completely miss his alarm.

He’d sprinted to the bathroom he shared with Minho, rushed through the quickest shower in the history of showers, got shampoo in his eyes, and cussed loud and hard when Jeongin came knocking on his door while he was brushing his teeth telling him that the vehicles were there, shocking him into jabbing himself in the fucking uvula with his brush.

When Felix had gotten out of the bathroom, dressed somewhat respectably with his hair dripping down the back of his collar, throat aching, Minho had silently handed him one of his backpacks with all of his usual essentials packed in and Felix had felt like crying at the older man’s consideration.

It was a three-hour drive and Felix has to do some breathing exercises because his phone was dead which also meant that he wasn’t going to be able to listen to anything on the way and at least try to fucking relax, and he wasn’t going to wake up his roommates who had already pulled up their hoods and retreated into them to catch some extra sleep.

Once they got to set, it was fittings and alterations first, and one of the new hires accidentally poked him in his tummy with a pin hard enough to draw blood and make him bite his tongue to stop the curses from spilling out because that shit fucking hurt.

She was apologetic, in near tears almost while one of the older stylists took over from her and Felix managed to get out a few reassurances before Minho breezed by, stopping only to stick a hello kitty plaster on his tummy before he disappeared back into the hustle and bustle.  

Felix sneezed during makeup and got a mascara wand to the eye and was sniffling black tears for a good minute while the stylist held a cotton bud under his lash line to catch each and every one before it could drip down and fuck up the rest of his makeup.

Changbin sneezed next to him when they were getting their hair done, startling Felix’s stylist, the flat iron getting a corner of his ear. Felix gritted his teeth through even more reassurances to everyone that asked him if he was okay, and tried not to tear up for the fourth time that day when Hyunjin tenderly applied some soothing aloe cream onto the shell of his stinging ear.  

The shoot ran over lunch, and when they actually fell on the crafts tables like a pack of hungry wolves, Felix had loaded up his plate and nearly wrestled Jisung for the last fried chicken thigh. Except one of the outsourced coordinators came over and reminded them not to eat too much because they wouldn’t want to look bloated for the shoot now, would they, and Felix’s appetite had vanished like smoke in the wind.

Minho had looked livid the whole time because Felix and Hyunjin had left their plates nearly full by the time they were called back, and Felix saw the older man hold eye contact with the same coordinator that had warned them off the food during the individual shoots while he cleaned the meat off a chicken bone with deliberate, pointed bites until the man had scuttled away looking deeply disturbed.  

After the shoot, they were asked to strip and then stuffed into new clothes for a few pre-recorded interviews, and Jeongin had to discreetly rub Felix’s back when the host from behind the camera teasingly brought up the very first concert on their tour after Covid, asking if Felix still cried like that almost two years later.

Felix felt like a rumbly, angry little raincloud when he got into the van well after ten in the night, and by the time they were all back home in their respective apartments, Felix beelined to the shower to wash away the day's stress. 

The water helps some, and the fact that nobody disturbs him mid-shower helps even more – Minho must’ve hopped into the bathroom shared between Seungmin and Jeongin, bless his fucking heart – and by the time Felix steps out of the bathroom, he feels less like a too taut rubber band.

The apartment is quiet, the others having retreated into their rooms, but when Felix follows his instincts – his grumbling stomach – and goes into the kitchen, there was a plateful of cold kimbap waiting for him, a glaringly bright pink sticky note on the saran wrap with a Jeuremi scribbled on it and nothing else.

Felix sighs, dropping to one of the chairs, and goes through each and every roll like a man starved – which he is, he so fucking is – and by the time he’s done, he’s feeling even more human; tired, exhausted both physically and emotionally, but still human.

He opens the fridge, takes out a prepackaged smoothie that Seungmin is obsessed with, and downs one in a few seconds flat. After, he drinks an entire bottle of water, too, because he had been careful not to drink any during the shoot since his clothes showed his abs.  

It’s while he’s brushing his teeth he decides to go over to the other apartment and cuddle up with Chris for the night because he deserved some good fucking skinship after the shit day he had, goddammit. Usually, he would’ve crawled into Jeongin’s, Seungmin’s, or Minho’s beds because none of them minded it when he did, but he knows that Chris is his best bet right now at– Felix checks the wall clock in the kitchen, fucking one in the morning because he would probably be up so Felix wouldn’t be disturbing his rest.

It’s with that thought he tugs on a coat over his pajamas, calls a cab on his phone that he had plugged into charge first in the bathroom, then in the kitchen, and leaves.

He can feel the exhaustion dogging his steps as he goes into the building and up the elevator, and he’s yawning wide enough to put a fucking anaconda to shame by the time he’s keying in the code and tiptoeing inside, blindly navigating the dark living room until he’s slipping into Chris’s room which had a crack of light seeping out from underneath the door.

But, when Felix blearily walks in, it’s not Chris in his bed but Minho who looks up at him with a singular, slow blink, his laptop open on the bed in front of his crossed legs, hair fluffy, specs on, and dressed in one of Chris’s hoodies.

“You’re not Chris,” Felix points out dumbly in English, his brain getting slower and slower.

Minho blinks at him again, just once, just as slowly and says, “my grandmother would’ve rioted if my parents named a good Korean boy like me Chris.”

“Where’s Chris?” Felix asks, helpless and still in shutdown mode.

Minho closes his laptop and sets it aside. “He’s in the studio, you know how he is.”

To Felix’s horror, he can feel the tears he’d been holding at bay for the entire day – minus the mishap with the fucking mascara wand – start to prickle at the back of his eyelids. Minho continues to carefully watch him from his perch on Chris’s bed, and when he asks Felix, voice all gentle and soft, “are you okay, Yongbokkie?”, it’s like the dam breaks.

“No!” Felix sobs and through his tears, he can see the speed at which Minho gets out of Chris’s bed, coming over to him in a flash. “No, I’m not okay! I had the shittiest day today, Minho hyung, and I’m stressed and tired and miserable and I just wanted someone to hold me to sleep but I didn’t want to bug any of you guys because you all have such good sleep schedules and Chris’s fucking sucks but– “

Minho just pulls Felix into a hug, big and warm and safe, and Felix clings to him tightly, crying frustrated tears and blubbering out his feelings to Minho in a mix mash of Korean and English. The older man holds him, humming in all the right places, encouraging Felix to let it all out and when Felix feels like a wrung-out sponge, Minho leads him to Chris’s bed, coaxes him into it and tucks him in with the blankets, fluffing up the pillows for him, too.

Felix makes a sad little noise when Minho straightens up and makes to leave, and the older man shushes him and tells him that he’s just going to put Felix’s phone to charge and get some water for him. Felix is half asleep when Minho comes back, but he obediently drinks all the water – he feels wonderfully hydrated and just knows that it’s going to be his bladder that’s going to wake him up in the morning and not his alarm – and not-so-obediently refuses to let Minho go until he’s huffing in what Felix knows is fondness and sliding into Chris’s bed next to him.

“Aigoo,” Minho murmurs when Felix turns over and latches onto him, “such a needy little baby, my Yongbokkie.”

There’s nothing condescending or demeaning in Minho’s tone when Felix knows firsthand how the same adjectives are used on him in a much different tone by people outside of their group, but Minho is his hyung and his family and Felix knows that Minho loves him softer than he loves a lot of things, soft like he loves his cats, so, Felix just hums, low and raspy with all the crying, making Minho chuckle.

“Hyung is sorry you had a bad day, Bbok-ah,” Minho tells him quietly and Felix snuggles in closer, closing his eyes when Minho hugs him a little tighter. “I’m sorry that Channie hyung wasn’t he– “

“S’okay,” Felix sighs because it was, it’s okay that Chris wasn’t here because Minho was, and Minho was just as good at Chris because they were both soft for him, soft with him, different as they are. “You’re here,” Felix tells Minho, tiredness suffusing every inch of his body, his mind slowly quieting with the assurance that he wasn’t alone, that Minho was right here with him, letting him cry all over him, vent to him, and now, fall asleep on him.

“M'happy you’re here,” Felix mumbles, sinking into the feeling of being held, all safe and warm. “You’re here, Minho hyung, and you’re,” he yawns right into Minho’s chest, “you’re more than enough.”

Minho doesn’t say anything for a long, long while, and it’s only when Felix is right on the edge of sleep that he hears the older man quietly thank him and wish him a soft good night.

Felix wants to say that there’s nothing Minho has to thank him for, that if anything, Felix should be the one doing the thanking; he wants to say that Minho doesn’t have to sound so surprised after all this time when one of them tells him that he matters so much to them because it’s a simple truth and they all love him, Felix loves him, but he’s just too tired and too sleepy so he garbles out a messy, “love you, hyung,” that he hopes conveys everything he wants to say to Minho for the time being.

There’s a small pause, then, quiet, soft, “I love you too, Yongbok-ah,” and Felix thinks good, that’s good, and promises himself that he’ll tell Minho all about how much he matters to him, how much he loves him all lucid and awake tomorrow.

For now, Felix sleeps.

…  

3.

Jisung is impressed with his own self-awareness when he opens his closet on a day off, finds nothing comfy and clean to wear, and his first thought is to himself that it’s completely and utterly his fault and his fault only.

It’s not like his closet is empty because it was far from it.

It’s just that it’s all silk and denim and leather and designer and Jisung would rather take a page out of Chan’s book and haunt their apartment in his birthday suit, scarring Hyunjin even more – not that it was anything he hadn’t seen, the hypocritic fucking prude – but he’s feeling soft, oversized cotton and not Adam and Eve.  

Jisung sighs and stares into the depths of his paradoxically empty yet full closet and goes over his options.

He had no plans for the day, absolutely nothing, zilch, zip, na-fucking-da, and he had even managed to convince Minho to let him sleep in and not drag him out to go biking near the Han River like they usually do simply because it was just too fucking early and Jisung wanted to remind himself what it was like to sleep past an alarm.   

“Whatever, Han Jisung,” Minho had said last night when he had come to the company to drag Jisung back home. “But if you’re not ready by seven to go out for dinner, I’ll drag you with me even if I have to do it with you kicking and screaming all the way in your holey Barbie tee-shirt and SpongeBob boxers.”

And since Minho’s threats were never truly empty, Jisung had agreed because dinner with Minho meant quality time with his best friend and a free meal, and before that, a whole entire day for him to sleep in and emulate the sloth he really should’ve been born as.

Usually, Jisung would have no problem in staying barricaded up inside of his room and coming out for toilet breaks and sustenance wrapped up in his blanket, but today he knows Chan made kimchi and egg fried rice – like he did on their day offs – and Jisung was craving that shit like a pregnant woman salivating after a jar of pickles.

The only thing is Jisung was out of comfy clothes – he vows to do his laundry sometime today before dinner – and he wasn’t really in the mood to endure Hyunjin’s deeply offended side eyes – Jisung could hear voices from outside so at least two of them must be up and about – because the dude sure had a problem with Jisung being naked when they weren’t in bed together.

“Pretty fucking hypocrite,” Jisung mutters under his breath, shutting his closet because it wasn’t like clean comfy clothes were going to magically appear with the sheer force of his want.

Jisung looks down at himself and just knows that none of his roommates would leave him alone if he went out in the tiny joke briefs Jeongin had given him with Seungmin’s face printed all over it and nothing else, even if he did so blanket-burrito-ed.   

Jisung sighs as his options, or option, singular, becomes clear.

Thievery, or like Jisung likes to maintain, borrowing with an intent to return regardless of actualization.

Jisung drags a blanket and wraps it around his hips like a toga and steps out of his room, phone tucked between the band of his briefs and his skin. Like this, he can hear Changbin and Hyunjin quite clearly and they both seemed to be in the middle of deciding whether they should go shopping or not. Chan’s voice is absent so Jisung assumes that their oldest member must’ve shut himself up in his studio all over again even if it was Chan that was jonesing for their day off in the first place. 

Hypocrites, Jisung thinks not un-fondly. He was surrounded by hypocrites. 

Jisung doesn’t really have a preference for whose clothes he was going to get his hands on, but it’s automatic when he walks into Chan’s room and closes the door behind him because everyone knows that Chan’s hoodies were laced in the human equivalent of catnip with the way they all carried an inherent sense of comfort and warmth.

Or maybe it was their mutual codependency talking, Jisung muses as he beelines to the older man’s closet, humming a tune that hadn’t left his mind for a few days.

Chan had left his windows open so there was more than enough light for Jisung to peruse through his collection, and Jisung is ready for the plethora of black, black, black that Chan’s wardrobe was chock full with when he opens it, except Jisung has to take a moment because–

“Huh.”

The contents of Chan’s closet are still predominantly black but interspersed are unmistakable pops of color that Jisung has never seen Chan wear outside of schedules where their stylists try their best to dress Chan in everything but black.

Curiously, Jisung yanks up his bedsheet toga in one hand and reaches out with the other to tug on something dark purple that turns out to be a hoodie with checkered black and white strings. Oddly enough, it looks familiar to him and Jisung tries to place it while he starts to pull out each colored shirt or hoodie or sweater that were neatly arranged on Chan’s hangers. 

A white hoodie with blue and orange sleeves. A green and white sweater with a green hood. A light teal-grey hoodie. A light pink sweater. A dark green Mahagrid sweater. A red crewneck sweater. A white tee shirt with a red, blue, and white hand showing the peace sign. A white collared black shirt with white stripes. A light blue Fallett shirt with their little cat logo on the breast pocket.

Maybe it’s because Jisung’s just woken up, but it isn’t until he pulls out an all too familiar navy hoodie with a damning Mark Gonzales scribbled on its upper left corner does Jisung realize that, oh.

Chan seemed to have developed serious kleptomaniac tendencies somewhere between comebacks and schedules, and the poor bastard had decided that Minho was the best person to steal from.

No thoughts, head empty, the first thing Jisung does is drop his bedsheet toga, pull out his phone from the side of his briefs, and call Minho while he kept staring at the insides of Chan’s closet like some sort of wilderness explorer coming across a tiger grooming a gazelle.

It takes a while but Minho does pick up right before Jisung is sent to voicemail.

“What.”

Minho sounds a little out of breath and Jisung feels honored that his best friend picked up his call even if he must’ve gone on their bike ride next to the Han by himself.

“Yo, are you missing clothes?”

There’s a pause and Jisung tucks his phone between his shoulder and his ear to actually tug out Minho’s navy-blue hoodie for himself.

“Right now, or in general?” Minho asks and he’s still breathing a little heavily.

“The fuck you mean right now or in general?” Jisung squawks in horror because, “don’t tell me you joined a nudist cult or some shit, hyung! What the fuck?”

“If I ever do join a nudist cult, I'll be the one charging them for blessing their eyesight and bettering their lives.”

Jisung scoffs and shuffles over to Chan’s bed, puts his phone on speaker and places it on his pillow to pull on the twice-borrowed navy hoodie.

“Scarring them for life, you mean,” Jisung says and Minho makes an impatient little sound. The hoodie is soft and it still smelled a little like Minho even over Chan’s cologne – he must’ve worn it, the stupid adrenaline junky, stealing from Minho of all people, the idiot – and it’s oversized enough that it falls to the middle of Jisung’s thighs, covering up his Seungmin briefs modestly.

“Han Jisung, why did you call me?”

Jisung lets out a low whistle and picks his phone back up.

“Testy, testy,” Jisung croons. There’s something strained in Minho’s voice, his breathing still a little too heavy and uneven. “You sound like you're biking, though. Thought a good workout would get that aggression out.”

Jisung can almost hear Minho’s eye roll at his words.

“Jisung.”

“Right, right, I’ll get to it,” Jisung snickers, going over to Chan’s table and plopping down on his fancy little gaming chair. “D’you know where your favorite blue hoodie is?” Jisung asks, cutting to the chase.

He’s ready for Minho to tell him that it’s back in his own dorm, own room own closet, safe and sound; he’s ready for Minho to tell him that he doesn’t remember or that maybe he’s left it in the laundry; he’s ready for Minho to tell him anything but what he actually does.

“Chan borrowed it,” Minho says easily and Jisung stills. “Why?”

Now this Jisung didn’t know how to navigate, so, he does what he does best when he’s in a sticky place and runs his mouth like he’s getting paid to do it, shooting question after question at Minho hoping that at least one of them would land and give Jisung the answers he’s looking for because he’s suddenly feeling like he’s missing something.   

“Where are you? What’re you doing? Are you with someone? What time are you coming home? Why does Channie hyung have half your clothes in his closet? Did you know that rhinoceros’ horns are made out of hair? Where are we going for dinner?”  

There’s a long, long pause on the other end of the line, the silence filled with Jisung’s soft breaths and Minho’s suspiciously heavy ones. Then, Jisung hears it. He blanches and rips the phone away from his ear to look down at it in abject fucking horror because–

“Minho!” Jisung hisses into the receiver, cheeks burning as he glares down at his phone like it just insulted his entire fucking family Bbama included, thumbing over the speaker option because like hell he was bringing it back to his ear. “Minho, tell me that I didn’t hear what I think I just heard or so help me fucking God– “

“You’re the idiot that called me, Han Jisung,” Minho says and now that Jisung knows, and Minho knows that Jisung knows, he stops trying to sound calm and collected, letting out a breathy moan, someone else whimpering in tandem with the unmissable wet squelch of skin against skin. “Fuck, baby. Shit, so good, honey. Being so good for me– “  

Jisung screams and throws his phone in the direction of Chan’s bed, the poor device bouncing on the mattress two, three times before it comes to a sad little stop near the pillows.

Jisung is breathing hard and fast, shell-shocked, terrified, and a little turned on because fucking Minho had fucking answered his fucking call while he was in the middle of fucking someone that moaned like a seasoned fucking pornstar straight out of a filthy fucking porno.  

He’s frozen in Chan’s chair, his dick half-hard and mind reeling with the– the utter debauchery that Minho had exposed him to and when the door opens and Hyunjin pokes his head in with a curious, “Hannie? Thought I heard you scream in here, you good?”, all Jisung can do is bring up his legs on the chair, hug his shins, hide his face in his knees and just whimper in a mixture of embarrassment, arousal, and horror.

All in all, it’s pretty par on the course for him, but he viciously thinks that he’s going to drag Minho to that expensive sushi restaurant for dinner tonight, eat until he can feel it up to his eyeballs, interrogate him about who the fuck was with him letting him answer a call mid-fuck, Jesus fucking Christ, because last he knew, Minho was pathetically single and secrets have never been a part of their friendship before.

…  

4.

They don’t have a schedule for it and it’s more of a non-verbal agreement that on the days that both Chan and Minho lose track of time in the company, one of them would brave the trip to their eldest’s respective studios and bring them back home for at least a few hours of rest.

They’re both most receptive towards Felix because all of them are, and Jisung and Changbin are only an option if there’s no one else because the likelihood of them joining one of them is always too high. Hyunjin also had a pretty good success rate because nobody can resist him when he starts looking all sad and miserable, and Jeongin is their last resort because he was their youngest and had them all wrapped around his unnaturally long fingers.

And Seungmin–

Well, Seungmin likes to think that he’s a nice in-between.

They have a few shows in Japan coming up and Chan had fallen asleep in his studio five days out of seven, and Minho was working with their choreographers to sort out their dance breaks because they all liked to switch it up for each performance, keep it interesting.

Jisung and Hyunjin were already asleep – or otherwise occupied, Seungmin shuddered – and it was Changbin that had texted on the group chat they had without Chan and Minho – purely for bullying purposes and because neither of them had even considered begging to be let in like Changbin had – when he had gotten in at almost three in the morning.

Felix and Jeongin were up, Seungmin knew, because their entire apartment was filled with filthy curses that rang around in all of the combined languages the two knew while they gamed, which is also why Seungmin had been the one to respond since a bomb could go off next to the two of them and neither of them would even know.  

Seungmin had been getting ready to sleep because they had a schedule that ran late and he had gotten caught up journaling and then reading a book he’d been steadily working himself through, so he had promptly offered himself to go collect their two oldest members.

He decides to walk because it’s barely ten minutes away from the apartment and the late – or early, from whichever direction of the sun – hour just means that the roads aren’t as busy with vehicles or people so that’s a definite plus, too.

The night guard nods to Seungmin when he walks in and it’s purely strategical when Seungmin first goes to the floor that housed Minho’s favorite studio instead of Chan’s because when it came to dragging Chan out of his work headspace, nobody did it better than Minho.

Hyunjin says that it’s because Minho could make the grim reaper wait for just a moment for him to feed his cats one last time before he’s whisked off, and Changbin thinks that it’s because Minho just had one of those faces.

Jeongin flat-out said that it was because Chan was a pushover for all of them, especially for Minho, and Seungmin agrees with him.

When Seungmin peeks inside the studio, he sees Minho dancing to a routine that Seungmin knows is just for him. So, he’s quiet when he opens the door and slips in, and Minho doesn’t spare him a glance, wholly focused on himself in the mirror, monitoring every line, curve, and angle of his body.

Seungmin sits down on the sofa in the studio and settles in to watch Minho dance. He decides that he’s going to give Minho three songs – one for each of his cats because he’s feeling a little sentimental – before he takes him back home with him.

Seungmin doesn’t think that he’ll never not be amazed at just what a talented dancer Minho is, even if he lives to be a hundred and three. It’s textbook, it’s perfect, but it’s still so raw and fluid the way the older man bends his body and controls every single muscle of his with flawless control.

Once the third song comes to an end and Minho’s shirt is soaked all the way through like he’d been out in a downpour, Seungmin shifts on the couch he had been holding very still on, and Minho’s eyes snap to the movement like a cat honing in on a poor little field mouse.

“Chase Atlantic?” Seungmin asks because this was the first time he’d seen Minho dance to them, the older man preferring songs that leaned more towards the hip-hop side.

Minho’s chest rises and falls rhythmically, skin flushed, hair dripping into his face and his eyes stay sharp on Seungmin through the mirror.

“Variety is the spice of life,” Minho deadpans and Seungmin snorts softly, relaxing back into the sofa, patting at the space next to him in invitation.

“So, you got a girl you wanna fuck later then?” Seungmin asks referring to the last song that Minho had danced to while the older man ignores his invitation to go over to the sound system and unhook his phone from it.

“Gonna ask me if I’ve had girls coming and going between my bedsheets too?” Minho chimes, checking his phone and pocketing it before he walks over to the couch and drops himself against Seungmin’s side.

Seungmin huffs disgruntled when Minho leans into him all sweaty and damp and sticky, but he still folds an arm over the older man’s shoulder because it was Minho, his Minho hyung, and Seungmin would do anything for him and a sweaty hug is nothing.

Still, Seungmin thinks about a hushed conversation he’d overheard between Changbin and Jisung and asks casually, “well, do you?”

Minho laughs at that, sharp and amused before he nuzzles his sweaty hair under Seungmin’s chin and pulls away with a fond look on his flushed face.

“I haven’t fucked a girl in a long time, Seungminnie,” Minho tells him. Seungmin doesn’t relent, not yet.

“Okay, a boy then?”

Now, Minho looks even more entertained.

“Why? You jealous, Min-ah? Yeji would break your face if you broke her heart like that, puppy, and I assure you that none of us are going to stop her.”

Seungmin makes a face and shoves Minho away.

“Vile, vile man,” Seungmin mutters when Minho gets off the couch with a smirk and starts ambling about, packing his stuff back up. “Heard you’re not single anymore, is all,” Seungmin shares, watching Minho closely but Minho doesn’t give anything away. “Was wondering why you didn’t tell me.”

At that, Minho stills for a moment where he was crouched near his duffle.

To outsiders, Minho was the predator and Seungmin was his prey. It was push and pull, Tom and Jerry, frenemies, divorced couple dynamics all the way. That’s what the company wanted from them and that’s what they gave.

But to the people that knew them, had grown up alongside them, Seungmin was Minho’s first friend at JYPE, all of seventeen and fresh off a world tour as a backup dancer to the biggest boy band of the century. Seungmin kept Minho company in the studios when they weren’t supposed to be there and Minho punched another trainee for talking shit about Seungmin’s looks.

Minho was one of his best friends and more than that, Minho was family. So, yeah, it had hurt a little when he’d overheard Jisung and Changbin whispering about trying to sus out who Minho was apparently involved with, and Seungmin hadn’t been able to quite let it go.

“It was complicated,” Minho’s voice brings him back to the present.

“Was?” Seungmin asks gently because was could mean that they weren’t together anymore, was could mean that Minho had his heart broken, was could mean–

“Go to Chan, Kim Seungmin,” Minho tells him gently but firmly, and when he turns around to look at Seungmin over his shoulder, Seungmin knows that he was okay, his hyung was okay.

“Come when you’re ready,” Seungmin says, already on his feet, and right before he opened the door to leave, Minho calls out to him. So, he turns back to look at his hyung questioningly.

“It’s not complicated anymore,” Minho says quietly, the sound barely traveling the distance between them. “We figured it out.”

Seungmin nods and leaves, feet automatically taking him down a path he could probably travel even in his sleep. The hallways are quiet as he takes steps out of the elevator, and when he keys in the code to Chan’s studio – they all knew it, and they only used it for nights like these, opting to knock or call their leader because they respected the boundary he drew with his work – the older man is sitting hunched in front of his set up, headphones over his ears, clicking away.

He doesn’t take his eyes away from his screens as he tells Seungmin to take a seat and Seungmin does as instructed, brushing a hand over Chan’s fried curls in passing, Chan leaning into his touch unconsciously.

Seungmin makes himself comfortable on the sofa and cuddles the Spotify pillow to his chest, slumping down sideways to look at Chan’s broad back and the screens with lines after lines of audio samples and recordings waiting to be arranged by Chan into something organized and beautiful.

He looks around the studio like he hasn’t been in there just that morning – or last morning, to be precise – and tries to catalog any differences if he sees any, but it’s more or less the same. Wolfchan was propped up on the desk at the corner of a screen, but Dwaekki was flopped on its side, dressed in a little maid costume.

Changbin must’ve tried to strangle him for it like he always does whenever Jisung shows up with ridiculous costume after costume for Dwaekki. Seungmin fondly remembers Felix and Hyunjin had cried laughing the time Jisung had dressed all of their Skzoo dolls in fucking lingerie for Valentine’s Day, neatly arranged them on the sofa, and taken a picture which was still the icon of their group chat.

Chan’s water bottle was still safely on the ground, far away from the wires. His trash must’ve been taken out at some point between the morning and now because Seungmin can’t see the bright orange shopping bag Jeongin had stuffed inside of it when it was already full to bursting. There’s something else on the ground near the trash can, something that must’ve either been missed or recent, and Seungmin squints his eyes trying to place the shiny, rectangular–

Seungmin blinks.

Huh.

Blinks again and leans forward just a little to– yep. Yeah, no mistaking that; the shape, the size, the color.

Magnum. Ribbed.

Seungmin idly wonders if Chan even knows that there’s an empty condom wrapper near his trash. Then wonders about the condom in question and sincerely hopes that the older man remembered to put it in the actual trash because cleaning jizz out of carpet just sounds like a fucking nightmare, not that Seungmin personally knows.

He and Yeji are civilized people, thank you very much.  

Seungmin settles back into his original position and closes his eyes. Chan continues clicking away and Seungmin must’ve fallen asleep for a little because when he comes to, it’s to the sound of a low, sweet hum that he recognizes.

For some reason, Seungmin holds his posture of being asleep while he slowly opens his eyes to see someone else had joined Chan in sitting in front of his setup. Seungmin recognizes Minho’s hair and this time, he’s the one who has headphones over his ear and is clicking around, and Chan is turned to him as much as their wheelie chairs allow, face hidden in the crook of Minho’s shoulder, eyes closed.

Something niggles at the back of Seungmin’s mind, and it sort of starts to fall into place when he glances down at the trash can and the empty condom wrapper is gone.

…

5.

Of all the countries that Jeongin had been to so far in his life, Japan is definitely in his top three.

There was just something about the place, something that Jeongin really didn’t know how to name or verbalize, but instead just felt. Coming to Japan always made him feel nostalgic for some reason, but also a little anticipatory.

It’s different, of course, between the city and the rural areas. There’s a big difference between the two, but overall, Jeongin thinks that the vibes of the country still had the same baseline nostalgic anticipatory vein he always felt whenever he was there.

They’ve had a slew of appearances to do the past few days, right after their Korean schedules for their newest albums were completed. A few concerts, a fan sign, a meet and greet, some variety shows, and then after they’re back home, it was two weeks they were given before they started up their third world tour.

They were supposed to get on a flight in the night to go back home, but the rest of the day was offered to them to do as they pleased and the eight of them had split off into groups or by themselves to do whatever they liked.

Changbin, Jisung, and Felix were tagging along with Hyunjin to go visit a few galleries Hyunjin had been eying for a while, and Minho had told them all not to disturb him unless someone was actually dying, opting to stay inside and sleep off the after party from last night.

Chan had gone with Seungmin to do some shopping for their families, a pair of managers and dancers in tow, and Jeongin had decided to go off by himself and film a mini vlog exploring Narita because he needed to recharge a bit.

He didn’t even need to ask a manager to tag along because they were all staying in a boutique hotel twenty minutes away from the airport and the area that they were in was mainly focused on farming and agriculture, so no one would be able to recognize Jeongin even if he danced to one of their songs in full costume sans mask.

So far, Jeongin had had a nice time just walking or taking the public transport available, going to a few temples and other touristy places that he found on recommendation sites. Since they’d come here during the early summer and decided to stay in an agriculture-focused area, everywhere Jeongin had been to was green, green, green.

He’d passed by countless sunflower fields, lavender fields, and houses with their gardens covered in hydrangeas that came in pink or blue or green or yellow, and he’d taken picture after picture and sent them to the group chat and Bubble because it was all too beautiful to not share. And when he’s on his way back to the hotel, he passes by even more flowery fields and spams Minho because he was the only person not doing anything until the older man asks him if he’d like to be turned into fertilizer for the plants since he was so into it.  

By the time Jeongin gets back, it’s just him, Minho, and some of their crew since everyone else had gone out to enjoy the good weather either around the area or all the way back to Tokyo like the group that had gone to the galleries.

Jeongin sits with some of them to share a pot of tea and when it goes a little past lunchtime which was when they’d all agreed to come back, he excuses himself to go freshen up in his room.

He’d just gotten ready and was in the middle of drying his hair when Chan comes knocking on his door, telling him to come down for food and that they’d arranged a private dining room for just the eight of them for the occasion.

Jeongin calls out to Chan that he’ll be down in a minute and once he does venture out of his room, he finds a hotel staff person who graciously leads him to the private area that was reserved for their group, bowing before she walked away.

Jeongin had been expecting himself to be the last one in but is pleasantly surprised when he walks in and sees that he’s actually one of the first ones down. Seungmin is sprawled on a chair on his phone and Chan was folding tiny origami butterflies out of several colorful papers that Jeongin doesn’t even know where the elder must’ve gotten from.

Chan looks up and smiles at him, dimples out, and Jeongin returns it automatically and goes to sit next to the older man.

“Hey, d’you have a good day?” Chan asks him, origami butterflies forgotten for the moment.

Seungmin snorts from the other end of the table before Jeongin can answer and says, “obviously, didn’t you see? He took enough pictures of flowers I could feel my allergies acting up over the screen.”

“Fuck you,” Jeongin tells Seungmin sweetly, hand going to the metal chopsticks set aside. Chan chuckles and tugs him away from it, and Jeongin lets him. “You’re not allergic to flowers the way you’re allergic to good taste.”

Seungmin doesn’t look up from his phone, but says, “clearly, I’m allergic to good taste because look at yourself. You think someone with good taste would pick someone like you as their best friend?”

Jeongin slides down his seat and Chan is too slow to stop him from kicking out at Seungmin’s shin in retaliation, making the older man hiss in pain and cut him a glare over his phone to which Jeongin smiles at him, dimples and all.

“I’m the light of your fucking life.”

“If you mean like a collapsed star that’s ten seconds away from sucking my soul out, sure.”

“Being this good-looking comes with a price, hyung-ah. Rest assured, your sacrifice isn’t in vain.”

“Does the price include humility? Because– “

“Okay,” Chan cuts off Seungmin with a high-pitched laugh. “Wow, I’m so glad that we’ve all had such a great time today! Iyen-ah, do you want to learn how to do origami butterflies?”

Both Jeongin and Seungmin turn to look at Chan with raised brows.

“You’re so old,” Seungmin sighs.

“So fucking old,” Jeongin confirms for Chan who raises his eyes heavenward like he’s asking for divine providence to step in when all Jeongin and Seungmin are doing is stating an indisputable fact. The earth is round, the sun is a star, and Bang Chan is old.

“Alright, fine,” Chan shakes his head and Jeongin can see the fond uptick to the corners of his mouth. “I am old, so, that automatically means that you two have to indulge me and do origami butterflies with me because you don’t know how long I’ll be here for you to make fun of.”

Jeongin reaches out and pokes Chan’s forehead, hard. Seungmin balls up a napkin and lobs it at his head.

“You’re not in charge of being morbid in this group,” Jeongin reminds him with a scowl. “Lino hyung is.”

“Memory loss in my old age?” Chan teases and this time, it’s Seungmin that raises his chopsticks in threat.

“Pass the fucking paper, hyung,” Jeongin sighs, taking the little notebook with colored paper that Chan was dismembering for his butterflies. “If you wanna do origami, let’s do origami. Here, Seungminnie, start folding.”

And that’s how the three of them spend their time until everyone else gets there, the entire table filled with an army of colorful little butterflies that were, to be fair, quite cute even if some of them were wonky from Jeongin’s and Seungmin’s first few times before they got the hang of it.  

“Move, brat,” Minho says tonelessly when he comes in last and sees that Jisung has taken up the seat on Chan’s opposite side, making Jisung gasps in offense.

“I literally got here first?” Jisung points out, and then like he’d just remembered, leans over Chan to point at Jeongin who was peacefully minding his own business, going through the menu he was sharing with Felix. “And you couldn’t ask Jeongin?”

Jeongin doesn’t look up but he sees from the corner of his eye how Minho shrugs and nods at Jisung.

“He’s the baby,” Minho shrugs. Jeongin turned twenty-three a few months ago but he wisely doesn’t point it out. “And I’m a firm advocate against child abuse.”

“You’re such an a– “

“Hyunjin-ah,” Minho says. “Ask your little boy toy to come sit next to you.”

Felix giggles into Jeongin’s shoulder and Chan just looks like he’s trying to disappear into his seat. Jeongin thinks that it’s cute how Minho is the only one who can get Chan so giggly and red.

“Yah! I am not Hyunjin’s boy– “

“Baby, come sit with me,” Hyunjin solves it for them and Jisung is already on his feet before he’s done speaking. “I’m hungry and I want to share the sashimi platter with you.”

“Absolutely fucking whipped,” Changbin mutters loud enough for all of them to hear while Jisung and Minho switch seats.

“Remind me again who keeps begging my boyfriend to let him touch his lips?” Jisung asks.

“Idiots,” Seungmin sighs. “I live day in and day out with fucking idiots.”

“Sit down,” Chan says, sounding so soft and fond that Jeongin is kind of embarrassed for him. “Sit down, order, and then we’ll figure out who’s a boy toy and who’s an idiot, okay?”

“Han Jisung is both,” Minho promptly replies but Jisung’s curse is cut off when the door to their room slides open and a server walks inside asking if they’re ready to order. Jeongin looks around to see who rang the small digital bell for it and Felix hooks his chin over his shoulder, nose brushing against his ear.

“I’m fucking starving and you know how those two get,” is Felix’s whispered confession and yeah, Jeongin gets it. “We’d be here till we’re fucking dust if I let that play out.”

After they’ve all placed their respective orders, they all descend into separate conversations, breaking off into pairs or groups. They catch each other up on what they did on their day off and when the food comes, Seungmin and Hyunjin make them wait for an extra five minutes until they’ve taken enough pictures to fill up their camera rolls, their butterflies piled on top of an extra bowl they’d asked for.  

Chan keeps putting extra pieces of meat and fish on Jeongin’s plate and Jeongin just enjoys it because this is the type of love and care he’d been blessed enough to grow up surrounded by, and because he can see how Minho passes on just as many little offerings for Chan while the older man is distracted, never once looking at him, fully engrossed in his conversation with Changbin and Jisung.

Jeongin feels warm whenever he sees it, not for anything else but for the fact that some things never really changed: Chan took care of all of them while Minho silently made sure that Chan was being taken care of, too.

They’ve polished off their sixth bottle of sake when someone knocks on the screen and Chan calls out, “come in!” in Japanese. Jeongin worries for a second that he’d maybe drank a little too much because the first thing he thinks when the screen slides open is that Chan’s just invited in some sort of eldritch creature with a humanistic torso and an explosion of flowers for a head.

“It’s a delivery for Bang Chan? I was instructed by Kim Jungil to come here?” the server says from behind the riot of flowers, his voice coming out a little muffled in the sudden silence because holy fuck was that a huge arrangement. Jeongin isn’t the only one who turns to Chan as one in wide-eyed surprise and Jeongin feels his jaw drop when he sees how hilariously red Chan had gotten while avoiding all of their eyes.

“Ah, um, yes,” Chan gets out, scrambling out of his chair to round the table and get his flowers before the poor server drowned in them. Jeongin doesn’t think that there’s anything nefarious in the flowers because their manager had cleared it, which is always a good thing. “That’s me,” Chan says, holding the huge bouquet with ease, cradling it against his tummy with the flowers reaching his lips. “Thank you so much.”

The server bows, Chan bows, and then the server leaves. Chan keeps standing there holding a bouquet of reds, pinks, and creams, blushing hard and bright enough to put a stop light to shame. They all just stare at their leader in stunned silence until Felix clears his throat next to Jeongin and takes one for the team.

“So, uh. Those’re nice.”

Hyunjin speaks up next, biting back a smile.

“They really are. Very pretty, hyung.”

“Who,” Changbin starts but his voice cracks so he tries again. “D’you know who it’s from?”

“See if there’s a card,” Minho instructs casually, and now that Jeongin looks at him, he looks to be the most unfazed out of the lot of them. “Jisung, help your hyung. He looks like he’s about to pass out.”

Chan splutters as Jisung rushes to his feet with a blinding grin, so obviously excited about holding this over Chan’s head for the rest of his life and clowning him for it. Chan looks like he’s trying to astral project himself out of this situation even if they all know that it’s too late. The damage is done.

“I thought you broke up with Seri noona a while back,” Seungmin points out casually while Jisung gently starts combing through the flowers looking for a card.

“We did,” Chan sounds so very, very embarrassed and he’s truly reaching impressive shades of red. “Like, way, way back. Over a year ago and then some.”

“Then who’s sending you flowers that mean, and take this with a grain of salt because it's been a while,” Seungmin says, tilting his head at the flowers, “eternal and passionate love from what I remember in that flower languages book I borrowed from Hyunjin?”

“Chris,” Felix pipes in from next to Jeongin, voice shaking a little with glee. With how he’s pressed up close to Jeongin’s side, Jeongin can feel how Felix is literally starting to fucking vibrate in his seat. “Chris, Channie hyung. Mate, are you fucking seeing someone?”

Before Chan can answer – not that he really needs to because it was obvious now – Jisung lets out a triumphant sound and fishes out pale pink cardstock, holding it up like a referee carding someone at a football game. Changbin is gawking at Chan and Hyunjin is scrutinizing the flowers, most probably recalling the meanings of each one.

“Oh?” Minho says, perking up. Jeongin glances at Minho properly now that Chan wasn’t between them, the older man watching Chan with a heavy look that Jeongin narrows his eyes at. “What does it say, Jisungie?”

Jisung looks down and flips the card over, eyes rapidly moving from side to side. Then, like he was trying to make sure that he was reading it right, he brings it up closer to his face, inches away from his nose.

“Wow,” Jisung whispers but Jeongin can hear the suppressed laughter and delight in it as the older man lowers the pale pink card with a shit-eating grin that Jeongin just knows spells trouble for whoever it was at the expense of.

“Wow, wow, wow,” Jisung sing-songs, waggling his eyebrows at Chan suggestively. “Damn, hyung. Just…damn.”

“Fucking hell, can you read that out loud before you give us all a fucking aneurysm with the suspense?!” Changbin exclaims. 

Jisung is literally bouncing on his feet when he turns to all of them and holds out the card with a flourish. He clears his throat like the showman he is, and Chan keeps trying to catch a glimpse of what’s written on the card over his flowers and Jisung’s shoulder.

“It’s heavy, the expensive shit you see in those invitations we get from brands,” Jisung shares the properties of the card first. “Pretty gold border, one of those flowery thingies on the top and bottom– “

“Floral line-border embellishments,” Jeongin says with an eye roll. “Uncultured– “

“Iyen-ah,” Minho cuts in with an amused snort. “Let Jisungie finish or you’ll have to be the one to clean up Changbinnie’s blood and guts from the place because he looks like he’s about to explode.”

“No, no, he’s right,” Changbin nods, literally on the edge of his seat. “I’ve tried it and let me tell you, I am not a fan of being edged– “

“Fucking Christ, hyung!” Hyunjin hisses, smacking Changbin upside the head. Chan is still trying to read the card over Jisung’s shoulder and his flowers, but Jisung keeps moving around, shielding it from the older man.

“What’s written on it, Hannie hyung?” Jeongin asks loudly before they get even more sidetracked and Jisung straightens up again, the rest of them falling quiet in anticipation.

“It’s printed, very elegant characters, also gold, but like, the soft, nice one,” Jisung picks up. “No address, no sender, just two lines in Hangul and a single, damning x.”

“Read it!” Felix hisses, his small hand gripping Jeongin’s knee tight in expectation. “What the fuck does it say, dude? Read it!”  

Jisung looks up from the paper and gives them all the smarmiest, sleaziest, most leery grin in his arsenal. Minho is starting to look bored but everyone else is completely invested.   

Then, Jisung reads out the message in that husky, dark tone he uses when he’s lazy rapping.

“Pretty when you cry, prettiest when you smile.”

The whole room erupts in screeches and jeers and hoots and Jeongin has to fight to breathe himself with how hard Felix launches himself at him, wiry arms around his neck, screaming in his ear.

…  

6.

The private studio Jisung uses when he’s recording alone sometimes reminds Hyunjin of Harry Potter’s staircase with a little more space and a lot more expensive technology crammed inside.  

It’s not that small, Hyunjin knows logically, but they’re all so used to Chan’s studio and being able to fit more than four people at a time inside of Jisung’s is like trying to stuff two people too many into a single-person photo booth.  

But for Jisung it’s perfect; it’s stickers and artwork on the walls, a cushy blanket and pillows on the two-seater couch, a mini fridge next to it that doubled as a little side table, an actual low table in front of the couch, and a setup as complicated as Chan which took up the majority of the room.

And since Jisung liked it, since it made Jisung happy, Hyunjin liked it too.

Because at the end of the day, that’s what mattered the most to him, even if it made cuddling on the couch an extreme sport after Jisung had gotten on his knees for Hyunjin and sucked his soul out through his dick.

“Don’t knee my dick,” Jisung mumbles while Hyunjin tried to find that one perfect position on the couch over Jisung that didn’t make him feel like a broken glow stick. “You have a vested interest in it, baby, don’t forget.”

Hyunjin snorts, “are you sure about that?”, more interested in finding that prime cuddling position because they both got needy after sex.

Jisung hums, his eyes already closed with a soft smile on his face, running a hand up and down Hyunjin’s spine, under his shirt.

“Off the top of my head, I could think of several million people that have a vested interest in my dick.”

Hyunjin rolls his eyes and props himself up on Jisung’s chest, folding his legs so that his shins didn’t dig into the edge of the couch painfully.

“You’re so fucking full of yourself,” Hyunjin tells Jisung, cupping his soft cheek, tone holding no heat. Jisung blinks his eyes open for him, all shiny and adoring and Hyunjin just has to kiss him when he looks at him like that, so he leans in and just does that.

“Rather be full of you,” Jisung grins against Hyunjin’s mouth after a bit and Hyunjin sighs, dropping his head on Jisung’s chest with a thump. Honestly, Hyunjin just had to go and date the most gremlin man to ever gremlin on the planet, didn’t he?

“You’re so gross,” Hyunjin sighs, shifting around a little to get more comfortable, Jisung wrapping him up in his arms securely so that he wouldn’t fall off of him. Hyunjin feels Jisung press a soft little kiss to the top of his crown, his chest rumbling when he tells him, “but you’re so in love with me anyway, aren’t you, pretty darling?”

And he was. Hyunjin was so in love with Jisung that it’s not even funny anymore the way it was when he had just been realizing it.

At first, Jisung was the complete antithesis of everything Hyunjin looked for in any potential friend, much less a partner. The only reason they started to work towards getting along instead of just tolerating each other was because Felix had ended up crying after one of their nastier spats and Chan had just looked on helplessly since there was only so much that he could do to mitigate their mutual animosity.

So, then it was stilted compliments and hesitant, helpful critiques which slowly, over time, turned into more as they both grew up and learned to grow with and around each other instead of against.

Hyunjin doesn’t know when they became actual friends, and the realization wasn’t something that came to him suddenly either because for him, it felt like he’d been friends with Jisung forever, their shared past a mere stepping stone to one of the strongest friendships in his entire lifetime.  

And then it seemed a little inevitable when that friendship turned into something more, something just as soft but more tender, more adoring. And now, Hyunjin had someone that wrote him songs, took him out on gallery dates even when it was one of his main interests, gifted him vintage cameras and flowers and jewelry and sweets and art supplies just because, read poetry to him on his bad days, washed his hair on his exhausted ones, held him, took care of him, loved him like he was the only person that has ever mattered and Hyunjin had found it all and so much more in Han Jisung.  

“Yeah,” Hyunjin whispers like it’s a secret even if it isn’t, not to the people that mattered. “Yeah, Han Jisung. You’re gross but I’m so in love with you anyway.”

Jisung just squeezes him tighter, drops a long, lingering kiss to his temple, and tells him, “that’s cool because I’m so in love with you it makes me seriously stupid that I've just stopped caring about it.”

“You’ve always been seriously stupid,” Hyunjin can’t help but point out, sneaking his hands under Jisung’s sweater to curl them around his waist.

“True,” Jisung says easily. “Based on that, I think I’ve got you beat in the whole so in love with you aspect of things, huh, honey?”  

Hyunjin doesn’t say anything because he’s comfortable and cuddled and being loved on by his favorite person, and Jisung simply starts humming the tune that he’d been working on before Hyunjin had come in with nourishment and the promise of sex to help Jisung relax for at least a little while before he went back to work.

Hyunjin dozes off and when he wakes up, his spine throbbed with the shitty posture he’d fallen asleep in but Jisung was lightly snoring with his mouth parted cutely, fringe flopping into his eyes. Hyunjin holds back a wince when he gets up, trying his best to retract himself from Jisung without waking him up, but it’s kind of useless with how tangled they were in the first place.

“Jin-ah?”

“I’ll be back,” Hyunjin promises with a kiss on Jisung’s cheek, petting his tummy to encourage him to rest a little more. “Just gonna get you something to drink, okay?”

“M’kay,” Jisung mumbles, eyes fluttering close and Hyunjin gives him one last peck on his cheek before standing up from the crouch he’d been in at the side of the sofa, knees popping.

Hyunjin bends down to collect their leftovers from dinner – and the soiled tissues that Jisung had buried under a whole wad of clean tissues, the paranoid weirdo – and doesn’t bother with anything more than his phone and wallet as he leaves, opting to forgo his jacket and mask because he was still in the company and very few people were there thanks to how late it was.

He gets rid of the trash in the nearest bin and goes to the elevator to take him to the floor that had the vending machine which housed Jisung’s favorite canned coffee drink, and on his way there, Hyunjin goes over one of his paintings that he’d been working on, deciding on some new additions that’d hopefully make it into what he wanted for it.

Hyunjin passes by one of their old practice rooms on the way to the vending machine, one that they rarely used now but used every day pre-debut, and it’s nostalgia that has him peeking inside only to stop short when he sees that it was already occupied.

There are two people in there and Hyunjin immediately recognizes the first person that was dancing in front of the mirrors that were adjacent to the entrance since it was Chan. He seemed to be going over some of their newer choreography, monitoring himself in the mirror. The second person takes a little longer for Hyunjin to place because Hyunjin could only see their side profile from where they were seated on the long sofa pushed against the wall right opposite the mirrors, their face obscured with a mask and a ballcap pulled low over their brow.

But the way their head moved almost imperceptibly, tracking Chan’s movements both in the mirror and in front of them was unmistakable: it was Minho.

The song comes to an end and so does Chan, sweaty and panting as he turns around to Minho on the couch with a serious look. Chan asks Minho something and Minho must respond because Chan nods. They talk for a bit, Minho obviously giving Chan feedback and pointers, and Hyunjin is seconds away from walking in to say hi when Chan’s serious expression melts into something playful and warm.

Chan says something and Minho freezes. Chan laughs and walks over to Minho and bodily tugs him up with hands on his wrists. Minho follows but from the line of his body, Hyunjin just knows that he’s making Chan work for whatever it is that he wants.

Chan pulls Minho closer to him once they’re in the middle of the floor. Places a hand on Minho’s lower back, the other reaching up to remove Minho’s ballcap and place it back on his head so that it’s backward and the top half of Minho’s face is uncovered.

Minho stays rigid even when he pulls down his mask to rest it under his chin. Chan just smiles, too soft, too tender, too fucking familiar to Hyunjin because Chan is smiling at Minho the way Jisung smiles at Hyunjin.

Hyunjin’s heart starts to beat in double time.

Minho says something and rolls his eyes. Places both of his hands on either side of Chan’s neck. Pulls him even closer so that their chests are brushing, Chan’s hands around Minho’s waist. Chan's eyes are crescents, folded and sweet. Minho’s mouth is soft, eyes softer as he looks back at Chan when Chan starts to sway them both to a song Hyunjin can’t hear.

What the fuck? Hyunjin thinks to himself, a cold sweat breaking out on his nape. He wants to move, he wants to walk away, pretend like he hasn’t seen anything because it was obvious, oh, it was so obvious now that he was seeing it like this– seeing something he wasn’t supposed to, something that wasn’t for him or anyone else but for Chan and Minho, just them, just for them, his oldest hyungs, the pillars of their little group–

Chan leads and Minho follows in his steps even if the latter is the dancer and not the former. Hyunjin is amazed because as far as Hyunjin remembers, Minho has never, ever let anyone else lead him like this in a dance, especially a slow dance, even when they were goofing off.

Minho always led, always, but here he was, letting someone else lead, trusting them to step right, and trusting them enough to follow them. Chan isn’t a dancer, not the way Minho is, but he’s still proficient as he slow dances them around the practice room, Stray Kids' first practice room, smiling at Minho like he was the end, the beginning, and everything else in between.

And Minho–

Hyunjin feels a little ache in his chest, a good ache, when he sees the way Minho was looking back at Chan. It’s similar to the way he looks when he’s talking about his cats, the way he looks at the rest of them when he thinks no one is looking, but there are layers upon layers of deeper meaning behind it now when he’s looking at Chan.

Chan tugs one of Minho’s hands down and adjusts their grips so that they’re properly, fully, waltzing around, Minho rolling his eyes, ears cherry red, but following him anyway. Chan says something and Minho narrows his eyes. Chan pouts and Minho nods and then Chan twirls Minho out seamlessly, expertly, almost like they’ve done this before, and Minho laughs as he’s twirled back in.

Chan dips Minho, grinning and so obviously in love, and Minho smiles back up, at ease even if a majority of his balance is in Chan’s arms, staying suspended between the older man’s embrace and the hard unforgiving floor so fearlessly, so trustingly.

Chan leans down and Minho leans up and Hyunjin walks away with a giddy heart and bright smile that he presses against Jisung’s mouth along with his can of iced coffee once he’d made the trip back to the younger man’s studio.

…  

1

It all comes to head like this.

They’ve been back home for all of two days after their tour and they all wound up in the company to celebrate one of their manager’s birthdays. Jisung smiles and wishes the older lady a happy birthday, gives her his gift, asks her to please, please let him wear his Converse stompers for their next schedule, and drifts off to a side to park himself next to Hyunjin who was chatting with one of their PR liaisons.

Hyunjin feeds him bites of the cake he’d had on his plate and by the time it all winds down, they had strong-armed the staff to let them do the clean up because it’s the least they could do for everything that they’ve done for them over the years in return.

Jisung feels like he’s on auto-pilot as he helps Felix collect the trash, Chan and Changbin sweep, and the others straightening up the furniture and packing away the leftovers to be put into the staff break room a few floors above.

Jisung is holding out the trash bag for Felix to toss empty cups and plates in so he sees when Minho crouches down to fish out a tissue that was wedged under the table, his shirt gaping open at his chest since he’d popped a few buttons when it got hot, and Jeongin just asks, “how long have you been with your boyfriend, now, Minho hyung?” to which Minho just mindlessly responds,

“Year and a half, give or take,” that makes everyone in the room freeze up.

Felix whirls around to gape at Minho, Chan looks like the surprised Pikachu meme, and Changbin chokes. Jisung looks at Hyunjin and Seungmin and some of his tiredness evaporates because both of them were studiously avoiding everyone else’s eyes until they look at each other, something like surprised understanding passing between them in a flash.

Huh.

Minho only realizes what he’s said in a few seconds and Jisung would laugh at how fast his best friend’s ears turn red if he wasn’t feeling like he’d missed a step going down a flight of stairs because holy shit? An entire year and a half?

Jisung remembers when he first spoke to Minho about his supposed partner after that one phone call from hell, and Minho had told him that yes, he was dating someone but he’d never once brought it up again and Jisung hadn’t asked because he thought that maybe things hadn’t worked out for them.  

Him and Changbin had tried to sus out who Minho must’ve meant, but they could never really figure it out like Seungmin and Hyunjin must have with the way they were looking at each other, not that anyone but Jisung had noticed with how they were focused on Minho and Minho only.

“Holy shit,” Changbin says. “Is it the same producer you said…?”

“Wait,” Felix blinks and turns to Changbin. “Wait, wait a fucking second. You knew?”

“Only because Minho hyung was being nasty!” Changbin defends himself.

“You know,” Jeongin says musingly, crossing his arms over his chest. “I was just taking shots in the dark, but now that you mention it, you haven’t been sleeping at home very often, have you?”

“Yeah, no shit,” Jisung snorts, mouth running on autopilot. “Hard to be in two places at once and sleep in his own bed when he’s…when he…ends up in…our…our apartment…” Jisung trails off, a vague idea starting to form in his head, the exhaustion not helping him piece it all together as quickly as he’d like.

Minho rolls his eyes and sighs. And then it all starts to fall into place when he shifts his attention onto Chan who was already looking back at Minho with the soppiest smile Jisung has ever seen on his oldest friend's face.

“You owe me a weekend in Jeju,” Minho tells Chan, his own smile softer and more intimate than Jisung has seen aimed at anyone else.

“You’re the one that slipped up,” Chan grins, dimples popping.

“Please,” Minho scoffs while they all just watch their back and forth like those kittens following tennis games. “You bet that they’d figure it out within the month. It took them six.”

“Actually,” Seungmin speaks up for the first time in a while with a mischievous smile and kind eyes. “I’ve known for almost three months now. You forgot to chuck a condom wrapper in your trash one time I was over, Channie hyung.”

Chan splutters in utter mortification and Jisung is still rebooting.

“I saw you two dancing together in our first practice room last month,” Hyunjin admits sheepishly, and now it’s Minho that’s starting to look embarrassed.

“Wait,” Felix says, waving his hands around. “Wait, wait, wait. Hold on, wait. Hyung,” he looks at Minho with bright, bright eyes. “Hyung, that night I came looking for Chris and you were…oh my god. Oh my god! Fucking hell, Chris!” Felix’s laugh is bubbly and delighted when he crosses the distance between him and Chan in a few quick steps, shaking the older man with his hands on his shoulders making Chan laugh along just as giddily.

“Why didn’t you tell us?” Felix asks and there’s no accusation in his voice, only acceptance. Jisung just keeps staring even when a familiar pair of arms wrap around his middle, Hyunjin hooking his chin over his shoulder with a soft, “are you mad I didn’t tell you?”

It takes Jisung a second or two while everyone else converges on Minho and Chan, him and Hyunjin standing a little apart, watching them congratulate their two oldest and asking them about how they got together, Seungmin cheekily prodding Chan into telling them how they met while Jeongin pulls out his grandma voice to ask Minho about his intentions with Chan.

“Oh my god,” Jisung whispers as everything comes back to him. Hyunjin hugs him a little tighter and Jisung repeats himself louder, horror in his tone.

“Oh. My. God.”

Minho’s eyes are crinkled in mirth but Chan can’t really meet Jisung’s horrified expression over the shoulders of the rest, and oh my God, oh good fucking God, what the actual fuck, no way, no way has this happened to him, Jisung was a good person, he didn’t deserve this because–

His voice is shrill and the only reason he doesn't lunge at Minho and Chan in mortification and disgusted fondness is because Hyunjin is holding him back, laughing into his nape, telling him to calm down but Jisung can’t, Jisung fucking won’t because holy hell–

“You made me listen to you two fuck!”

…