Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Jeongin only finds out by accident. 

He thought, maybe, they didn’t have many secrets between the group, these days. It’s hard to keep them when you live in each other’s pockets, anyway. Maybe that’s what hurts so much about it. He only finds out by accident. Jisung hands him his phone, so they can put in a group order on a delivery app, and Jeongin gets to watch, in real time, as Jisung receives a flurry of notifications from contacts he recognises in a groupchat he very specifically doesn’t.

So maybe that’s the worst part. Harder still is handing Jisung back his phone and not saying anything, even when Jisung checks his phone again and narrows his eyes at Jeongin. Like he knows. 

“Yah,” Jeongin says, clipped and brittle, just short of sticking his tongue out. It works – Jisung’s eyes soften around the edges and he reaches for Jeongin again, shoving the phone vaguely in Changbin’s direction, his free hand coming up to pinch at Jeongin’s cheeks. “Get off me, you brute. Hyung,” Jeongin adds, to soften the blow, and tries for the wide smile that’s somewhere between cute and just straight-up baring his teeth. Jisung pouts, exaggerating with his lower lip, and Jeongin relents, lets Jisung tug at his cheek like he’s three years old. Instead of another twenty on top of that.

He’s not thinking about it. He’s not. He doesn’t need to.

Jisung presses closer, slings an arm around Jeongin’s shoulders. He puts on a voice, the one they all do when they talk to him: sweet, and gentle, like he’s still young. “Don’t you love me, maknae-yah –” kissing Jeongin’s cheek, his chin, the corners of his eyes. “Don’t you love me, Ayen-ah?”

Well. That’s kind of the problem. Jisung’s lips land a little too close to his and he pulls back like he’s been burned. At once, Jeongin feels cold. But it’s fine. He’s not thinking about it. Changbin throws Jisung’s phone across the room until it lands in Chan’s lap, ignoring his squeal. There’s other things to think about. He’s fine.

“Your groupchat’s name is dumb,” he mumbles, squirming out from under Jisung’s arm. “By the way.”

Six new messages from ADULTS ONLY 🔞🔞🔞‼️. Minho-hyung: I want to [...]

Jisung makes a noncommittal noise, still watching the others actively throw his phone around the room, and seems not to process Jeongin’s words for a moment. Then – a solid four seconds later, not that anybody was counting – he turns back towards Jeongin as if in slow motion. His eyes wide, a little antsy. “Huh?”

“Jesus, hyung, if you go deaf who’s going to –”

“It’s not –” Jisung sucks in air through his teeth, throws a glance Changbin’s way as if for help. Jeongin swallows down something hot and dirty rising in his stomach. “Ah, Ayen-ah, it’s – we talk about, you know. Sex. Sometimes.”

Jeongin hums. Jisung’s eyes keep darting around between each member, like he can’t have this conversation with Jeongin alone. “Without me?” It comes out plaintive, a little pathetic. Jeongin swallows around something that could be guilt or humiliation.

“Aegi,” Jisung starts, and then stops, like he doesn’t know what to say from there. “It’s not – it’s nothing you need to worry about, Jeonginnie.”

Jeongin feels like he should be a little worried about it. He doesn’t say that. He looks at Jisung, at the way he can’t meet his eyes. “Hyung.”

“Jeongin-ah, seriously –”

“Even Seungmin?”

Jisung falters. He looks pained. Which is answer enough. The six months between them feels mouth of the river wide, torn open. 

Something vicious curdles in Jeongin’s chest. He shrugs. “I’m an adult,” he says, as neutrally as he can. “I – I have sex.”

Jisung chews on his own lip, says, “Jeongin-ah, you know we can’t –”

“So keep it in the group,” Jeongin finishes. Doesn’t need to hear the middle part of it. He’s overheard it enough times; overheard plenty else, too. Minho’s especially bad for it. Likes making Chan beg when Jeongin’s got a pillow over his ears, trying to sleep. “Sure. I know, hyung.” He doesn’t point out the hypocrisy. Says, “I’m not stupid.”

Okay, maybe he’s fucking thinking about it.

“I didn’t say you were stupid, Jeonginnie,” Jisung says. His voice cracks, like this hurts him more than it hurts Jeongin. Something cold, vindictive, in Jeongin kind of hopes it does. “We just… We just thought…”

Across the room, he watches Felix tackling Chan against the sofas, Minho massaging his hands into Seungmin’s shoulders. The way Hyunjin orbits all of them, looking back to Jisung every now and then. Changbin, in the middle of it all. Jeongin, outside of it. Jisung follows his gaze.

“Whatever you’re thinking,” Jisung says softly, “don’t. It’s not… not like that.”

“So tell me how it’s like,” Jeongin says. He lifts his chin. Jisung doesn’t seem to want to look at him, not really, but Jeongin presses his lips together anyway, aiming for unaffected and probably landing in the ballpark of bitchy. Hyunjin’s gaze snags on the two of them for a moment, across the room, and something wordless passes between him and Jisung – enough in Jeongin’s language for him to recognise the exchange. Foreign enough for it to be unintelligible. Jeongin, outside. Hyunjin’s brow furrows, and he begins picking himself across the room towards them.

Jisung swallows. Jeongin watches the bob of his throat. “We just – want to look after you, Ayennie,” he says, hoarse, hushed. “You – I mean, we all grew up too fast. I know it was bad for you. Chan-hyung said –”

“I’m twenty-three now, hyung. We haven’t been… kids,” Jeongin says plainly, “for a while. Chan-hyung knows that.”

What goes unsaid: Jeongin sees the way they all look at him. The way Chan does. Like they can’t take their eyes off of him for a second, like the world narrows to a point with him at the tip of it. He’s not stupid . 

“Ahh…” Jisung makes a face. His nose scrunches up, and is then shadowed by Hyunjin stopping just short of his feet. “Hyunjin-ah.”

“What are you saying to our Jeonginnie to make him look like this?” Hyunjin accuses. Jisung looks at him properly, like it’s the first time he’s ever seen Jeongin. For a moment, there’s that familiar sense of hesitation – the pause at the apex of a swing, the moment right before a long fall. Jeongin is used to feeling on display, but it’s different like this: Jisung’s eyes, skittish and earnest, darting their way over Jeongin’s face, his body. Like he doesn’t want to let himself look, even now.

Jeongin swallows. He looks up at Hyunjin, the flush to his cheeks – none of them are meant to drink on weeknights, but someone keeps smuggling shit into the dorms anyway, and Jeongin’s not complaining – and it occurs to Jeongin then that he is not above dirty tricks. “Nothing,” he says, blinking up at Hyunjin, ignoring the weight of Jisung’s eyes on him. “Don’t worry. I’m gonna go take a shower before the food gets here.”

“Use my bathroom,” Hyunjin suggests, “Changbin leaves his dirty gym clothes all over his.”

“Innie, wait –” Jisung says, and then pauses when Jeongin looks at him. “Just. Really. Don’t worry about it.”

Jeongin frowns. He’s not worrying about it. Just thinking. “Okay, hyung.”

“What aren’t you worrying about?” Hyunjin asks, leaning closer into Jisung’s space. A question for Jisung to answer. Jeongin stands up to leave, brushing against Hyunjin’s shoulder as he goes. It’s not quite sparks, but something burns and burns and doesn’t stop burning until he gets into Hyunjin’s room. 

At Hyunjin’s door, he turns, glances over his shoulder. Hyunjin is watching him, bottom lip caught between his teeth. Hesitant. Intent.

Yeah, Jeongin can do this. 

He leaves the door open behind him, steps into Hyunjin’s ensuite and, at least, closes that one, because he doesn’t want to lay it on too thick and has some sense of decorum. He folds his clothes one by one as he sheds them. Hyunjin’s bathroom is identical to Jeongin’s own, down to the brand of conditioner in the shower – the volume Hyunjin gets out of it is frankly obscene – but there are signs of his presence in the little things. The hairties strewn by the sink. The dye-stain on the porcelain, vivid red. Rings, taken off in a hurry, discarded by the counter. A few that he recognises, worn on his own fingers.

He showers quickly, thoroughly. Using Hyunjin’s products feels different to his own; wrapping his hand around the creases in the bottles, thinking about Hyunjin’s own hand here. Fingertips touching. He washes off what feels like layers of dirt. Realistically, barely a day's worth, grit and sand, the thick scum of hours of practice. 

Jeongin thinks about Hyunjin’s hands there, too. Brushing over the breadth of his shoulders, his waist, his hips. Creasing under pressure. If he listens, over the thrum of the water, he can hear him in the living room. All of them.

He shouldn’t. We talk about, you know – sex. The calluses on Hyunjin’s palm. Jeongin shuts off the water, drops his shirt in the draining puddle, drags the towel with rough efficiency over his own skin. Wonders who would be gentler with him. Voices from the living room. The clean new lines of Hyunjin’s arms as he bulks up. It’s not like that. We just thought… I’m not stupid, hyung. Bodies, always bodies. Jeongin has never thought overmuch of his own. He knows it’s attractive enough; that’s his job. It does what it needs to.

“Hyung,” he calls, tugging his briefs and sweatpants back on.

No one replies for a second, but the noise outside Hyunjin’s room peters out. And then, footsteps, the floorboards creaking. Jeongin opens the bathroom door, steam curling out of it. The chatting resumes in the living room, and Hyunjin looks in through the door.

“Innie?”

He’s never thought much of his own body. But the others…

Hyunjin’s body curls around the open door frame, lithe and controlled, and then ripples as he roves his gaze over Jeongin’s. It’s different like this. Something thick between them, passing back and forth. Jeongin wants to know what he’s seeing.

“What, um,” Hyunjin’s tongue, wetting his lips. His teeth, biting them. “What’s up?”

Jeongin swallows. He wants. He’s familiar with want, the way it sits in his bones; familiar, too, with denying himself. But why should he fucking bother? “Dropped my shirt,” he says, ducking his head, and knows the flush written high on his cheeks doesn’t need to be feigned. “It’s, uh. Wet. Sorry. Could I –?”

“I’ll get you another,” Hyunjin says quickly, his words tumbling over each other like river stones. Jeongin thinks of six months, thinks of thirteen, feels the curl of satisfaction in his stomach. “I –” A bitten-off word, like there’s more to say. Hyunjin can’t quite look Jeongin in the eyes, but doesn’t seem to think anywhere else is safe either; his gaze skitters up and down the walls.

Jeongin raises an eyebrow, a little sardonic. “You’ve seen me without my shirt before, hyung,” he says, and then – because what the hell – tilts his head a little, exposing the line of his throat. It’s a cheap trick. All of them know it. 

“It’s…” Hyunjin doesn’t need to say. It’s different like this, smoke and mirrors. The distance between them is so near and wider than ever. Hyunjin’s eyes are dark and heavy. His hand twitches. “Jeongin.”

Hyunjin crosses to his dresser, digging through it for a shirt. Closer. Further. Jeongin watches his arms, the way his shoulders fit under his own t-shirt. “It’s what?”

Hyunjin just shakes his head. His hair, falling out of the ponytail he’d tied during practice, shifts back and forth. Mesmerising. Hyunjin’s voice drops. “We can’t.”

“Can’t what?”

He turns back holding a t-shirt. Jeongin doesn’t even look at it. Hyunjin doesn’t look at him. “Innie, please. You know what.”

Jeongin shakes his head. “Just tell me. None of you will say it.” Speaking of cheap tricks, but – someone has to put it into words. “I see how you look at me.”

Because it’s the same way he looks at them. Mouth of the river, gaping, wide, open. Like there’s more to it, always more to it. Jeongin wants so badly it hurts sometimes; it’s a low-grade ache, one he’s adjusted to. He does and doesn’t know why this has torn open the half-healed thing, made the sting of it fresh.

Hyunjin says to the floor, “We’ve got to look after our maknae, Innie. Keep you safe.”

Jeongin feels his lip curl. “Yeah,” he says. “Yeah, okay.” He holds his hand out for the shirt, shrugs his way into it, burns where their fingers brush. It smells like Hyunjin’s overpriced deodorant and like the room he shares with Changbin, and a little like smoke from the time they’d set fire to the curtains, and a little like sweat, even clean and washed and dryer-soft, because this is one of Hyunjin’s practice shirts and the smell never quite comes out after long enough. 

Jeongin says, “Tell me if you change your mind, hyung. I know what I’m doing.”

It makes Hyunjin blush. Beyond his bedroom, the front door slams and someone returns with plastic bags. Jisung, in the distance, whoops. He doesn’t say anything else, even after Jeongin waits. He watches Hyunjin’s throat bob as he swallows, like something is stuck in his throat, thick and unrelenting. 

Jeongin exhales. He rolls his shoulders, feels Hyunjin’s shirt sticking to his skin. Their arms brush together when he pushes past Hyunjin to leave, and now it’s like lightning. Hyunjin’s body tenses, rock solid, and his breath catches. Jeongin doesn’t look at him. Stepping outside his room, the surface tension breaks. He takes his first breath, anew.

Hyunjin stays in the doorway. He doesn’t look up either. He holds himself so tightly it looks like it hurts. Jeongin doesn’t look back, not for the rest of the evening.

They eat American-style burgers and fries, because Felix had a craving and none of them have ever really been able to tell him no; the living room is big enough for eight by necessity, but it still feels close. Private. Precious. Jeongin turns down soju when he’s offered it – thinks, what, I can drink but I can’t be touched?, a little sardonic, like the bite of the alcohol is already lining the back of his throat – and then beer when Felix tries to ply him with it, eyes big and wet and smile-creased. “God, you’re so drunk,” Jeongin says, and lets himself gaze at the way Felix’s body moves so fluently, draped over the back of the couch. He’s not looking at Hyunjin. “Get off me, hyung,” but he lets Felix wind fingers into his hair anyway.

“Tipsy,” Felix corrects, as though the distinction really matters when any amount affected is more than they’re allowed to be in public. Maybe it matters because Chan won’t touch him if he’s drunk, Jeongin thinks, and swallows down something sharp. Soju. River water, clean and demanding and whole. Felix tips his head back with hands in Jeongin’s hair and pours something down his throat; Jeongin swallows. What else.

He looks back up. Changbin is watching. Changbin says, loudly, “Yah, Felix-ah, get your hands off the maknae!”

Felix just laughs. He doesn’t stop touching Jeongin, but his hands do move from his hair to his shoulders to skim over his arms. “You sound jealous, Changbin-hyung,” Felix says, ducking closer, till his breath flutters over Jeongin’s cheeks.

He’s not sure what the game is, now. Felix is changing the rules. Everyone looks at him when he speaks. When he keeps his hands on Jeongin. Like there’s a line, somewhere, and Felix has stormed over it. Has dragged Jeongin with him. Changbin watches the two of them, like something’s itching under his skin, the same way Jeongin’s blood boils with the river current: rapids in his chest. What else, Jeongin thinks. Why the hell not.

He reaches backwards for Felix’s head, tilts his own closer, mouths at Felix’s lips. Hot and wanting. Some dam has come undone in Jeongin’s body, and he thinks, I can have this. Watch me have this. Felix hesitates, but then he’s kissing Jeongin back, upside-down like Mary Jane in the Spider-Man movies, messy and slick and perfect. Jeongin closes his eyes but can’t keep them like that. Felix’s hand is a sweet pressure on Jeongin’s bicep. Across the room comes the sound of a crash, like a dropped plate, or the falling of the metaphorical other shoe.

Here comes the flood.

The universe rushes back in with such significant force Jeongin feels lightheaded. Felix’s lips, soft, moving against his. Blood pounds in his ears, down to his fingertips, like he could explode with it. Across the room: Changbin, staring. Everyone is silent. Hyunjin, in the doorway, shards around his feet. Looking at him like he’s never looked before.

It is different like this, Jeongin allows. He pulls away from Felix until there’s inches between them, breathing into his mouth. He wonders what they’re seeing, if they’re looking at him or at Felix. Or at the space between them, blurred. Consumed, now. 

“Felix –” Chan says, quietly. Like any louder and something would break. 

“It was me.” Jeongin’s voice is jagged glass. “I – You don’t need to Felix him. I started it.” He squares his jaw, says, a little haughty, “No one gives a shit when you kiss him in front of everyone, Channie-hyung. Or have we started caring about public decency now?”

Felix’s breath billows against Jeongin’s lips. Chan makes a small, strangled noise, says, “That’s fair.”

Jeongin stares at the ceiling, at the wisps of Felix’s hair in his periphery. Breath moves in and out of his chest like the tide. Distantly, he hears Minho’s voice: “Don’t move, Hyun-ah. I’ll get a dustpan.”

Don’t move, don’t move. Don’t breathe. Jeongin sucks in another breath, slumps down into the sofa, away from Felix’s lips, feels the moment break. Still: Felix’s hands skimming over his shoulders. Reassuring. Gentle.

“We should talk about this,” Chan says, after long long minutes of silence. “Um. Probably.” Like he doesn’t want to be in charge of this conversation.

Felix laughs above him. “Chan-hyung, what is there to talk about? We know each other well enough for this, don’t we?”

Chan says again, “Felix,” in that kind of tone where everyone knows he agrees but he doesn’t want to say it. Felix moves, lifting his hands from Jeongin’s body to move across the room and put them on Chan instead. Jeongin mourns the loss of his touch for about as long as it takes for Felix to get his hands on Chan, and then he wonders if this is what they looked like, too.

Felix’s hands squeezing Chan’s biceps, his shoulders, small against Chan’s figure. Assured. Confident. Teasing. “Channie-hyung,” Felix, whispering, bending his head over Chan’s. Loud enough to be heard. “Channie-hyung, let him. You made him wait long enough.”

Let him. It tastes like acid. Made him wait. We talk about – The air in the room feels too thin. Jeongin swallows, melts into the couch further, tries not to hear it. He doesn’t like the way anger tastes. The shape of Felix’s hands on Chan’s biceps – it’s not even as simple as jealousy, but want gone sour. Not instead of, just let me. He doesn’t want to be looked at, seen, not now, not like this. That strange euphoria is gone from the room. He hears Jisung’s laugh, then, off-beat and forced like he’s trying to think about something, anything, else; Jeongin knows the feeling.

The evening melts into something off-kilter, like Jeongin has taken the wrong part in a familiar choreography, left everyone else scrambling into new positions. Jeongin keeps quiet, picks at his fries, virtually sober but for the single shot of whatever the hell Felix had kissed out of his mouth; he thinks Minho cleans up the broken plate, house slippers inoculating him against the shards of ceramic. Rapids in his gut. The slick current of want. Jeongin, a stone, the river in motion about him.

The couch dips beside him; Jeongin glances up, glaring before he can stop himself, feeling bright and rough around the edges. Changbin knocks their legs together, reassuring. They’re okay. Everything is okay. Their skin presses together, and Jeongin inhales sharply, and then holds his breath.

Someone’s left the TV running, autoplaying a show, but the noise of it blurs out. The others, their careful chatting, fades into the background. Jeongin exhales, here and now. Something between all of them has changed, heady and new. Part of him relishes in it. Part of him really relishes in it.

“Okay, Ayen-ah?” Changbin asks, knee against his. He uses a cute voice, nudging into Jeongin. Touching him. “Don’t lie to hyung.”

“Okay,” Jeongin says, keeping quiet now. He means it, almost. Still off-centre, unsettled, on edge. “Can I just –” He doesn’t know what he’s asking for, how he plans to finish the sentence, only moves closer to Changbin until their hips are touching. He doesn’t do this. Never really initiates. Ten minutes ago, it would have been understandable, if out of the ordinary; now, it’s loaded. He waits for Changbin to pull away. Let him down softly.

“Yeah,” Changbin says gently. His voice is rough and pleasing; his cheeks are a little flushed. Jeongin hadn’t seen him drinking, but then apparently there’s a lot he doesn’t see, these days. Still, Changbin slides his arm around Jeongin’s shoulders, tentative, as though convinced Jeongin is about to screw up his nose and shove him away. It makes sense. It’s what Jeongin should do.

The price of desire. Changbin’s body, beside his, adjusts easily. Jeongin feels like he’s going to die. He’s no stranger to it, to… to Changbin. But his arm is weighed down with something else. His hand brushes against Jeongin’s neck, thumbing over his pulse. 

“Your heart,” Changbin whispers, “Jeongin-ah, breathe.”

His heart, his heart. That’s the problem. “I am breathing,” Jeongin says, “ you breathe.”

This close, he can feel Changbin laugh more than he hears him. His body ripples, stomach tensing, chest, arms. Arms. The arm around Jeongin’s shoulders flexes so hard Jeongin wonders if he’s doing it on purpose. If that even matters, when Jeongin burns through with that desire anyway. Not that he’s thinking about it. Jeongin thinks he might be shaking a little, doesn’t know what to do with it; the last thing he wants is to seem more like a fragile thing, something to be protected, to be held.

“Ayen-ah,” Changbin murmurs. “You want to go home?”

“No,” Jeongin says mulishly. Changbin’s fingers tense against Jeongin’s shoulder, then gentle, as though in apology. “Let Channie-hyung do whatever he wants with whoever he wants. I don’t care. Can I – can I stay here tonight?”

Changbin makes a sound under his breath, so choked Jeongin almost thinks he’s imagined it. “Yeah, Ayen-ah,” Changbin says. It’s like a litany. “Of course.” Jeongin can hear what he’s going to say next, the shape of it, in the weight of his inhale: “Jeongin-ah, you know it’s –”

“Don’t,” Jeongin says. “If Channie-hyung wants to beg for Minho-hyung’s cock all night, that’s none of my fucking business. I get it.”

The sigh Changbin heaves is so big, Jeongin’s body is moved just by proximity to it. “Innie,” he starts. “Jeongin.”

Jeongin swallows around all the teeth in his mouth, the sour bitter anger. “Hyung, I just… why can’t anybody tell me anything?”

Changbin’s thumb scrapes over his pulse. The side of his nail catches there, sharp pain for all of a second. He seems conflicted, torn. “Chan-hyung thought it was best. You were… you were just a kid, when this all started. And he knew how hard it would be for you, to grow up like this. So when he and Minho started messing around, and when I found out, he said we should keep it between the three of us for a bit. It wouldn’t have been fair to any of you.”

“And then,” Jeongin says.

Changbin’s breath rattles through both of them. “And then,” he agrees. The room is quieter than it was. Jeongin thinks Felix and Seungmin are gone now, can’t see them on his perfunctory scan of the space, but it doesn’t really seem to matter. “I don’t know, Innie. It got out of hand.”

“That’s so stupid,” Jeongin says. “You know that, right?”

“Yeah, maybe.” Changbin isn’t looking at him, but his thumb draws shapes into Jeongin’s clavicle that could be hangeul or musical notes. He laughs. “Chan-hyung had this idea of making your first time perfect, you know.”

Jeongin’s own laugh startles out of him, toothy and genuine. “Seriously? He’s about three years too fucking late.”

“I figured,” Changbin says. “Ugh. Jeonginnie, come cuddle with hyung. I didn’t want to think about this tonight.” His voice is two-toned, torn – equal parts playing at cutesy and something else underneath, lower, truer. Still, he doesn’t move. Like he’s waiting for Jeongin to break the dam, cross the line, change them.

“I want to think about it,” Jeongin says. He’s been thinking about it. He’s so used to wanting. He presses closer, just a little, to Changbin. Intentional about it. “I want… I want to hear about it.”

Now Changbin looks at him. Their apartment is quiet, for once. Jeongin didn’t even realise anyone was leaving. Changbin’s thighs flex, tight in his jeans. His knees spread a little, into Jeongin’s. Jeongin bites his tongue so hard it hurts. “Yeah?”

“I want a lot of things, hyung,” he says softly. Changbin’s arm, over his shoulders. His other hand between them, burning against his side, creeps over to rest on Jeongin’s thigh, the crease of his hip. 

“Tell hyung what you want, Innie,” Changbin says, tells, instructs, voice light in the distance between them. God. God. “And I’ll give it to you.”

Changbin’s hand slips when Jeongin climbs into his lap properly, knees on either side of his hips, fingers curling around to hold Jeongin’s waist. The hand on his neck moves to cup his jaw, to guide Jeongin in. It’s easy to kiss Changbin like this. Some part of Jeongin feels unspooled, untethered – before tonight, he hadn’t known the shape of Changbin’s lips on his own, the precise weight and gravity of the swell of Changbin’s bottom lip. Felix’s, either. 

It’s not like it’s the best kiss, technically speaking, that Jeongin’s ever had – but want pools in the joints, the places where his bones meet, the places where his skin touches Changbin. This isn’t another trainee, anonymous in the back halls. This isn’t the uncomplicated way he’d touched Beomgyu, careful not to mark, careful not to want too much – they’d known where the lines were, there. This is brilliant and broken and not something Jeongin should be able to have; he feels river-tossed, flung about, at the mercy of the current of his own desire. (Surely wanting someone for so long should blunt the edges of it, like a river pebble, make it easier to bear – but instead it just sinks heavier, deeper, until it’s all-consuming. It’s not fair. Jeongin knows all about fair.)

So he kisses Changbin. Teeth, lips, hands, pressing into each other. Parts, wholes. Changbin holds him together, pieces of him. Jeongin is a conduit for want, and Changbin’s body is ripe with it too. 

Felix was right. He’s waited long enough.

“Is this what you wanted?” Changbin asks, words pressed against Jeongin’s mouth. As if Jeongin could ever want anything else.

“Yes, hyung, please –” his hands find purchase around the back of Changbin’s neck, fingers twisting in the short hair at his nape. “Just – just kiss me.”

“ Just kiss you?” Changbin seems relatively committed to his efforts at conversation. Jeongin bites at his lips, snapping his teeth. There are plenty better things Changbin can do with his mouth. “Ayen-ah, hyung can do a lot more than that.”

Jeongin is tide-tossed, doesn’t know what to do with this. Want is so much easier than have. “I thought you guys had a rule, ” he says, greedy and bitter, digging his fingers into Changbin’s skin. “Chan-hyung will –”

“Jeongin-ah,” Changbin says. “Channie-hyung isn’t here.”

Ah. Jeongin draws far enough back to glance around the living room in earnest, leaving his hands slung around Changbin’s neck because he can, relishing in Changbin’s hand cupping the bone of his hip – Changbin’s right. Jeongin, caught in the current of desire, hadn’t noticed anyone leaving. In fact, all of them are gone, save for Hyunjin, who’s collecting up empty takeout containers and determinedly not looking Jeongin’s way; the nape of his neck is brilliant scarlet where his hair, drawn up into a low ponytail, leaves it exposed. Jeongin swallows around a sensation which might be guilt or want; he’s not sure he can remember the difference. Doesn’t know when the rest of them had even left. “Hyung,” Jeongin says, and isn’t quite sure who he’s speaking to.

“Hm?” Changbin says, gentle in a sort of brittle way, like he’s holding on to restraint but it isn’t coming easy. That’s a sort of head rush, that Jeongin has done this to him. When he looks back, Changbin’s eyes are dark with the blown weight of his pupils. 

Jeongin swallows. “I saw you were drinking,” he says. “I don’t want you to –”

“Ayen-ah,” Changbin interrupts. He sounds so intent; his fingers dig into Jeongin’s hip. “Jeongin. Trust me. Hyung knows what he wants.”

There are so many things to choose from. “I…”

Changbin’s eyes soften. Like he knows. The illusion of choice. “Or… hyung can choose something. And you tell me if you want it.”

Jeongin flexes his fingers around Changbin’s neck. “That… yeah. Yes.”

He smiles, small, careful. And then, louder; “Hyunjin-ah?”

Something sparks its way down Jeongin’s spine. Fear, desire, pouring through him. “Changbin-hyung, that’s –”

“What you want?” Changbin finishes. He already knows the answer. Jeongin listens to Hyunjin put something down in the kitchen, and then the creak of floorboards as he walks back to the living room. The sharp intake of breath.

Jeongin does and doesn’t want to look, but the magnetic force of want wins out over the curling of something shy in his stomach – he turns his head again and sees, like deja vu, Hyunjin, lips parted, framed by the doorway. Face drawn into something too complex to name. Jeongin wonders how he looks, settled above Changbin, posture hunched in a strange way that must be sort of unappealing and definitely and visibly off-kilter, uncertain, running on a want that sits sticky on his tongue. The way Hyunjin looks at him answers that question, though. That half-lidded gaze. Improbably obscene, for something that wouldn’t be out of place on the cover of a fashion magazine.

“You guys are going to make me drop another plate,” Hyunjin says, then, visibly scrambling for composure. The teasing camaraderie is an easy place to fall when they don’t know how to handle what runs underneath it – Jeongin’s seen it again and again. “‘Hands off the maknae, Felix-ah!’ Seo Changbin, you just said this!”

Changbin laughs again, this time bashful, red on his cheeks. But a little like he doesn’t care, anyway. “Hyunjinnie, come on.” He spreads his thighs a little more, as far as Jeongin’s will allow. Forcing Jeongin’s apart with his movement. “Come here.”

“Hyunjin-hyung,” Jeongin says, and then doesn’t say anything else. He turns, pushes his face into the junction of Changbin’s shoulder. He’s not – embarrassed. But it’s different, doing something and being seen doing it. Sends shivers up and down his body, sparking all the way to his fingertips. 

Hyunjin, behind him. He’s shy, putting his hands on Jeongin, but he does it. Keeps them close to Changbin’s hands, fingers overlapped. But he puts them there, one on Jeongin’s shoulder and one on his bicep. Jeongin’s skin feels like something set alight; he actually twitches, almost but not quite a flinch, before settling. Before Hyunjin can draw his hands away, he says, into Changbin’s shoulder, “Sorry. Hyung. Feels nice.” The sound of his own voice startles him: a low rough thing, so heavy with desire that he thinks it must be painted in the air. Here lies Yang Jeongin. Got too horny for his members. Spontaneously combusted because one of them touched him on the shoulder.

Hyunjin’s laugh is reassuring, a known quantity. Jeongin can’t see him, but he sounds more settled, like at least he knows what he’s doing now, and it soothes something analogous in Jeongin’s own chest. “You seem tense, Jeongin-ah,” he coos, and it’s that same sickly tone they love to wrap his name up in but there’s something different about it now. Throatier. Like Hyunjin is trying so very hard to mean it when he treats him like a kid.

“Maybe a little,” Jeongin says, leaning back against Hyunjin. He’s not sure what the script is now, what game they’re playing anymore. To what ends. 

“I’m sure we can do something about that, Hyunjinnie,” Changbin says. Euphemistic. Not looking at Hyunjin. Looking at Jeongin. “Hyunjinnie will do anything, Jeongin-ah. Anything you ask him for.”

The rush of power makes him lightheaded. “Anything?”

“Just for you,” Changbin says. Jeongin can’t see Hyunjin’s face, but he hears the noise he makes. Like it’s true. Like he hates that Changbin’s saying it, but it’s true. “Ask him, baby. You should see the way he looks at you.”

Jeongin doesn’t have to see that to know. “I want… um…”

When his hesitation draws on longer than a moment, he feels more than hears the huff of Hyunjin’s soft laugh – Hyunjin presses it against the back of Jeongin’s neck, almost touching but not quite. His forehead rests on the back of Jeongin’s hair. “Take your time, Innie,” he says, and even though it’s Innie that sugared edge is gone from his voice – tender, yes, but not quite sweet. Hyunjin’s voice, so close to Jeongin’s ear, sends blood rushing double-pace through his veins, makes him almost light-headed – the private husk of it. “There’s no wrong answer, hm?”

Changbin starts drawing little shapes against Jeongin’s body again, his fingers moving in small intimate patterns, utterly distracting. Jeongin fights the urge to squirm. It’s easier, when he doesn’t have to look at Hyunjin, to say, “I took my shirt off on purpose earlier, you know. Wanted – wanted you to look at me. Want me.”

Hyunjin’s breath ghosts through his hair. “Did you drop it in the water on purpose, too?”

Embarrassing. Jeongin doesn't answer. He doesn’t need to.

“Yah, Innie,” Changbin scolds, when it becomes clear that yes, he did. “You know if you want our attention you can just ask. As if we’re ever not paying attention to you in the first place.”

Well, he couldn’t. He says as much, bitter. “If I’d asked, you wouldn’t have given me anything.”

They both heave equal sighs of – something. Shame? Guilt? Resignation, maybe. Jeongin doesn’t intend to make this easy for them. Changbin says, between teeth, hands skimming Jeongin’s sides, “so tell us now. Or, you want hyung to suggest things? Is it too hard to say out loud?”

Jeongin snorts. He’s got a sort of fight back in him now, less overwhelmed by touch; he wants to press back into Changbin’s hands but can’t, not really, can’t lean towards either without moving away from the hand on his other side. “I can suggest things fine, hyung.” 

“All talk unless you do it,” Hyunjin says from behind him. He’s pressed closer now, and Jeongin feels his lips move against the nape of Jeongin’s neck as he speaks – dry, maybe from the salty food or the soju or whatever the hell else he’d been drinking. Pleasing, the rasp of them. Jeongin fights down a shiver, feels heat dance its way through his body. 

“Changbin-hyung,” he says, “does – does he look good on his knees?”

Hyunjin’s intake of breath is rabbit-quick; Changbin’s grin is dark, animal, teeth sharp. “What do you think? Of course he is. You want to see that?”

He nods, blinking slow. Changbin manoeuvres them easily, twisting Jeongin in his lap until his back presses against Changbin’s chest instead, legs spread by his, head tilted by his hand. Jeongin meets Hyunjin’s eyes and promptly has to look away. 

It’s like – like looking into the sun for a second too long. Jeongin blinks black spots out of his vision. Hyunjin’s gaze is dark, weighted. His cheeks are flushed, hair messy with a day’s wear. His teeth biting into his lips, tongue, flesh. “Come on, Hyunjinnie,” Changbin prompts, when neither of them move. Jeongin thinks he could look up at Hyunjin like this forever, and then Hyunjin gets down on his knees instead.

Jeongin reaches forward before he can really think about what he’s doing – drawn by the flood raging within his body, the swell of it. Once, the strength and conditioning noona had written something into their programs using an exercise ball half-filled with water – it was twice as difficult to handle as a barbell of the same weight, because of the way the water moved within it as he lifted it, kept him off-balance, always lagged a second behind Jeongin’s movements. He is the water and he is the ball and he is the unbalancing. So Jeongin leans towards Hyunjin, who kneels just out of reach. The low ponytail Jeongin had seen before, the mess of it – Jeongin wants to tug it loose, break its banks. Leave the mark of the flood behind.

Changbin’s left arm curls around Jeongin’s waist, and tenses, now, almost proprietary. Stops him from moving any further. “Let him come to you, Ayen-ah,” he murmurs, as close to Jeongin’s ear as Hyunjin had been before and just as devastating. He splays one hand over Jeongin’s stomach, wide across his abs, fingertips under the waistband of his sweats. He wonders if Changbin feels when his stomach flutters.

Hyunjin moves closer, pushing between Jeongin’s knees. He traces one hand up the inside of Jeongin’s thigh, featherlight, until Jeongin shivers.

“I’ve been waiting so long, hyung,” Jeongin murmurs, not sure who he’s talking to. Hyunjin, maybe, looking up at him, fringe curling into his eyes. Lips parted, tongue pushing against his teeth. A string of saliva stretches between them, stretches, stretches – breaks. 

“Be patient,” Changbin tells him. Fuck patience. Jeongin reaches one hand out, tangles it in Hyunjin’s hair carefully, pulling him closer still. Changbin doesn’t stop him; he just laughs, squeezing the hands at Jeongin’s waist in reprimand. 

Hyunjin moves like it’s his second language, always has; he’s graceful, even like this, on his knees. It’s a funny sort of contradiction. Even when he’s clumsy there’s a sort of beauty to the pattern of his movement. (Maybe Jeongin’s biased. He’d never fucking say that out loud, obviously. He is who he is.) He’s not clumsy now, though – comes when Jeongin tugs at him, makes shuffling on his knees look somehow effortless. That fucking look, through his eyelashes – Jeongin knows that Hyunjin does it on purpose, knows it’s as dirty a trick as the way Jeongin had tilted his head earlier, or the way he’d answered the bathroom door, shirtless and wreathed in steam. It doesn’t inure him against it. He feels sort of suspended, with the way Changbin keeps his legs spread, the way he isn’t really touching the couch – it’s a whole-body sort of arousal, when Hyunjin looks at him like that. But Changbin’s fingers toy with Jeongin’s waistband, and the faint sensation sends him slamming back into his body, reminds him he’s so hard it hurts. 

“Don’t make me wait anymore,” Jeongin says, but there’s no need. Changbin’s thighs spread his further apart, and in the same breath Hyunjin leans in closer to get his mouth on Jeongin’s dick, mouthing it through his sweats. The sensation is muted, gentle, but the visual bowls him over. Jeongin feels all of his blood vessels constrict at once, blinking heavily. 

“What was that about waiting, hm?” Changbin says into his ear, but Jeongin barely listens. Hyunjin mouths greedily at his cock, Jeongin’s hands still in his hair; there isn’t much that could pull his attention away from that. Changbin’s fingers tug at his waistband. “If either of you can let go of each other for a second, we can take these off,” Changbin says, scraping his nails under Jeongin’s shirt, like he’s entirely unaffected by this. He’s not: he’s so hard, against Jeongin’s spine, thick and heavy. 

Jeongin shivers. Then twists again, more deliberately, both to test the give of Changbin’s arm around his waist – minimal – and extremely unsubtly press back against Changbin’s dick; the hint of nails against Jeongin’s stomach becomes a sting, for just a moment. Jeongin thinks he’s made of lightning. It could be terminal? “I like it here,” he says, because he wants Changbin to laugh against his neck again and because he doesn’t want to roll over and show his belly just yet and maybe, a little, because he wants to see Hyunjin laugh too. Wants to be reminded that this man, his eyes half-lidded and lust-blown, mouthing at Jeongin’s clothed cock with lips river-wide, is Hyunjin, familiar, sweet. The boy who’d stayed late in the practice studio with Jeongin, offering as much stupid commentary as he had advice. The man who’d dropped a plate because he saw Jeongin kiss Felix. Hyunjin on his knees is a little like a beautiful stranger wearing Jeongin’s hyung’s skin – but then he rocks forward with a little wheeze, straight into Jeongin’s dick, clumsy again for just a moment.

Jeongin will not be held responsible for the sound he makes at the pressure, suddenly insistent, thick, perfect. Changbin’s fingers work lower, graze the crease of Jeongin’s hip; he says, husky, “Stop winding him up, Innie. C’mon. Be good for hyung now and let’s get these off.”

He acquiesces: there are worse things, probably, than Hyunjin putting his mouth on Jeongin’s dick with nothing in between. Changbin handles most of it, pulling his clothes off with ease. He takes Jeongin’s shirt off, too, smooth enough that Jeongin doesn’t quite realise he’s done it until he’s already sitting in Changbin’s lap again, naked between them. Hyunjin’s eyes track the way his dick bobs, as Changbin parts their thighs again, Jeongin’s legs hooked over his. 

“Don’t you want Hyunjin-ah to suck you off, Innie?” Changbin says, loud enough they can both hear. Quiet enough still that it lifts all the hair on Jeongin’s body. They’re not sneaking around – he’s fairly sure the rest of the boys will know about this by tomorrow morning. But something feels secret about it anyway. Jeongin wants to keep it to himself for a little while. “Look how bad he wants to.”

He does look like he wants it. Jeongin can’t look at Hyunjin for too long without feeling like he’s going to have a heart attack. Hyunjin, fully clothed, looks more fuck-drunk than Jeongin feels; dazed, heatstruck, Jeongin reaches for him again. Twines his fingers into that stupid low ponytail and tugs – he’s trying to get the hairtie loose but Hyunjin moves easily with the pressure, too easily, and at once Jeongin is dragging Hyunjin closer, into the soft skin on the inside of his thigh, utterly bare. Hyunjin presses his lips to the skin, offers the barest graze of teeth, sucks gently. Jeongin feels like his insides might melt out from him, or something; Changbin says, quick, alarmed, losing that lilting edge he’s had since Jeongin first swung a leg over to straddle him, “Hyunjin-ah. ”

Hyunjin jerks, actually looks mollified – Jeongin makes a sort of strangled half-whine when Hyunjin pulls back and mumbles, “Sorry. Sorry.” It’s uncomfortably genuine, like the real world has prised its fingers into the cracks of the apartment. Jeongin gazes at the inside of his own thigh, spit-slick, the imprint of Hyunjin’s mouth beginning to bloom red-raised.

“I know better,” Hyunjin says. There’s a clarity to his words, bitter, chlorinated. It comes to Jeongin then, something he’s heard the others muttering about: marks aren’t safe. Not for them. Not when their bodies are their jobs, their lives, belong as much to the company as any copyright.

That doesn’t change how badly Jeongin wants it. But then Hyunjin’s mouth moves from his thighs to the crease of his lip, not biting, pressing lightly, and it’s close enough that it rattles through Jeongin. Changbin moves one of his hands from Jeongin’s waist to curl around Hyunjin’s jaw, tender soft, playing with the waves of his hair. “Another day,” he says gently. When there’s less to lose. “Come on, baby. You’ve been waiting for so long.”

Jeongin isn’t entirely sure who he’s talking to when Hyunjin wraps his lips around the head of Jeongin’s cock. If it even matters, when Hyunjin has his lips on Jeongin’s cock. His mouth is warm and wet and his tongue laves over the head, controlled even in their desperation. Jeongin can’t even hold himself back from squirming on Changbin’s lap, hips twitching upwards into Hyunjin’s mouth until Changbin’s hands keep him firmly still. Even that makes something flutter in his stomach, hot and fast, holding him down. 

He’s had blowjobs before. But Hyunjin is different about it. Jeongin feels weightless with it – his face, his eyes, the way he’s staring up at both of them. They’re ruining him for sex with anyone else, probably. He doesn’t even mind. 

Changbin’s hand is broad and warm over Jeongin’s stomach, solid against Jeongin’s back, grounding even as Jeongin feels like he’s losing his edges, struggling to keep track of where he blurs into the air around him, the line between himself and Hyunjin where heat blooms so violently between them Jeongin feels almost like laughing. Of course it’s good. Of course Hyunjin’s good at giving head. Changbin says, hoarse and sweet – that undertone of restraint again – “Tell him if he’s making you feel good, Ayen-ah. He likes that.”

Jeongin feels a tremble go through him, beginning at the point where Changbin’s lips move against the edge of his jaw, rippling outwards until it threatens to unmake him. “Maybe I’m –” he begins, sharp-edged but a little nonsensical, then chokes on air as Hyunjin’s tongue works over the underside of his cock, gives a little keen that hangs in the air between them. Needy. The shape of it makes Jeongin want to curl inwards, to never be looked at again; he thinks he might die if Hyunjin stopped touching him, if Changbin took his hands away. He gropes for words. “Maybe it’s not that good,” he says, breathier than he’d like but passably coherent, then whines, jerks his hip against Changbin’s hold, as Hyunjin arches an eyebrow and takes Jeongin down to the root.

Changbin laughs at them both. “Innie, you don’t have to lie to us,” as if he knows. As if Hyunjin’s sucked his dick before. The image makes him shiver. “You’re going to have so much fun with Minho.”

“What – ah, what do you mean?” Hyunjin moves up and down on his cock easily, tongue curling around him, hollowing his cheeks as he pulls up. How Jeongin gets words out in order is beyond him. He gets his free hand around Changbin’s thigh, something to hold onto, squeezing it so hard it must hurt. 

“If you want to be a brat,” Changbin explains. His hands skirt around Jeongin’s chest, fingers splayed on his stomach. One hand rolls over his nipples, tugging gently until Jeongin arches into it. “Minho likes that. Well, he likes training it out of you.”

Hyunjin pulls off to talk. Spit drips out the corner of his mouth, over his lips, pools down his chin. “He trained it out of me.”

Jeongin grumbles, surprising himself but perhaps a little more coherent without his dick actively in Hyunjin’s mouth, “Says the guy who stopped sucking my cock just to make a dumb comment.” It sounds – petulant, maybe almost whiny, but Changbin laughs like he’s pleased, and that sends a different sort of warmth pooling in Jeongin’s belly, hazier around the edges.

“He has a point,” Changbin adds, then drags his finger gently over the nub of Jeongin’s nipple again. Abruptly it’s like very little else matters; Jeongin whines, presses into the touch until Changbin drags his hand away. Jeongin squirms but only as much as Changbin lets him. Presses against Changbin’s thighs as if to close his own legs, just to see if he could, and his dick actually jerks when he encounters resistance: Jeongin, spread like a butterfly pinned to a board. Mouth of the river wide.

“Please,” Jeongin says. “Jinnie-hyung. Please.”

Hyunjin has the nerve to giggle. “That lasted a very long two seconds,” he says, but obligingly leans back in, presses his lips to the line of Jeongin’s other, unmarked thigh, just to be a tease.

“Behave, Hyunjinnie,” Changbin says, carries more weight than Jeongin begging. Hyunjin relents, grinning up at Jeongin, kissing around his dick before swallowing it down until Jeongin’s hips buck. Changbin’s grip tightens; “you too, Jeonginnie,” firm, pressed into his skin. Jeongin doesn’t need to see the way he must be frowning, brow furrowed cutely, teeth biting into his lips.

“When you say Minho-hyung trained it out of him,” Jeongin says, voice thin in his throat, focusing mostly on Hyunjin now. At the way his eyelashes flutter, how all the tension seems to ooze out of his body now he has his mouth on Jeongin’s cock. Part of him wonders just how long they could stay here like this, Hyunjin’s mouth on him.

“Mm?” Changbin bites gently at the skin between Jeongin’s neck and shoulder, barely hard enough to hurt let alone leave a mark. “You want to know what hyung will do to you?”

“Ah – maybe –” Hyunjin swallows around him, pulling up just far enough to wrap a hand around the base of Jeongin’s dick, touching him lightly. “Hyung, Changbin-hyung, I –”

“Hyung likes making people wait before they get to come,” Changbin says, almost conversationally. Hyunjin’s hand works at the base of Jeongin’s cock with just enough pressure to feel inexorable, inescapable; Jeongin is caged by the presence of them both, doesn’t know which way to squirm. Changbin’s hand tightens around Jeongin’s stomach. “We’re not that mean, though, Ayen-ah. Just want you to feel good.” A damnably smug note to his voice: “Is it working?”

“Hyung, ” Jeongin says, aggrieved.

Changbin huffs against Jeongin’s shoulder, sounding petulant himself, put out, says, “Wanna mark you up, Jeonginnie.” Jeongin’s skin prickles with the image. He hears a high, thin moan, realises a moment later that it’s his own. “It’s too bad, huh? Tell Hyunjin-ah he’s making you feel good, baby. Go on.”

Inhaling is possibly the hardest thing he’s ever done. None of the oxygen seems to reach his lungs. Opening his mouth now feels a little like giving up, but once he starts talking he can’t stop. “Hyung, it’s – good, it’s so good, ah, Hyunjinnie – please, it’s, it feels so –”

Changbin’s body shakes his when he laughs at him. It prickles at the base of his spine, hot and fiery. “He’s good, isn’t he? He’s always been good at this.”

“It’s so good,” Jeongin chokes. He feels like he might cry. “It’s so good, Hyunjin-hyung, hyung, it’s –”

“Minho-hyung taught him this too,” Changbin says, quietly, biting the shell of Jeongin’s ear. “Hyunjinnie, show him.” On command, Hyunjin moves, does something with his tongue, scrapes the edge of his teeth against Jeongin’s dick. Sucks. Sucks hard. Jeongin can’t breathe. “Minho-hyung tied him up for hours like this,” Changbin whispers, “putting his mouth on Hyunjinnie’s cock, showing him how to do it. Until he could do it himself.”

“Hyung, I’m gonna – I’m – I want to –”

“Ask for what you want, Innie,” Changbin says, calm in the face of it, his voice level. Jeongin can feel the line of Changbin’s cock pressed against him, the heavy throb of it through Changbin’s jeans. The evidence of want. Hyunjin drags his tongue against the underside of Jeongin’s cock, eyes almost-closed, like he loves doing it. His hands skim Jeongin’s thighs, in a sort of frantic motion, like he wants to touch Jeongin everywhere at once, can’t linger. Desire tangles in Jeongin’s stomach, horrid and encompassing, almost too much to bear.

“Want you,” he manages; embarrassment flares bright and immediate in his gut at the way his words come out slurred, but Hyunjin hums something that might be appreciation or encouragement, the murmur of it tangible around his cock, and it bolsters him. “Want you, both of you, hyung. I wanted – ah – wanted you for so long.”

Changbin hesitates; when he speaks, it sounds choked for a moment. “Be specific, Ayen-ah,” he says, devastatingly gentle. “You want hyungs to make you come?”

“Yes, please, hyung, please –”

“Where?” Changbin asks. He needs to focus less on talking and more on making Jeongin come. He digs his nails into Jeongin’s stomach, touch light, pain barely there. Just enough. “Where do you want to come, Innie?”

Jeongin gasps, “where –? I don’t –”

“In Hyunjinnie’s mouth?” Changbin suggests. The universe narrows very tightly, squeezing Jeongin between its walls. Blood rushes in his ears, white water rapids, filling him up, drowning him. “In his hand? Or… on his face?”

“I don’t know –” he can’t think straight, with Hyunjin’s mouth still firmly on his dick, looking up at him.

“Hyung will choose, then,” Changbin says, easy. He readjusts his hold on Jeongin slightly, moving one hand from his waist to trace down his stomach, to furl around the base of his dick. “Hyunjin-ah likes it all. You wanna come on his face, Innie?”

“Yes, hyung,” Jeongin manages, even when the thought alone threatens to overwhelm him. Changbin’s hand on his cock. Hyunjin’s mouth suckling at the head.

Changbin hums. “He likes it a lot, you know. Hyunjin-ah’s wanted this for so long. He talks about it all the time.” Jeongin feels desire like a river stone lodged in his throat, even against the dull old throb of frustration – talked about it when? To who? Why ask questions when you already know the answers, maknae-yah? It hardly seems to matter when pleasure is rippling like this through the marrow of him, coiled hot and sweet in his core, spiralling higher every time he glimpses the way Hyunjin’s eyes have fallen almost entirely shut, the lust-blown sliver of pupil visible beneath the dark arch of his lashes. 

Changbin groans, then, rough and wanting just below Jeongin’s ear, murmurs, “Jeongin-ah. So pretty, hm? Doing so well for us. Fuck. ” Jeongin can feel the insistent press of Changbin’s cock against him, thinks about having it in his own mouth, fists his fingers tighter into Hyunjin’s hair at the image of it. 

“Hyung,” he says, hoarse. “I’m – hyung, close, please.”

“You can come, Jeonginnie,” Changbin says, “whenever you want, okay?” His fingers, thick, firm, guide Jeongin’s cock out of Hyunjin’s mouth, replacing it with his hand. Changbin doesn’t have to say anything for Hyunjin to open his mouth, stick out his tongue, lean in a little closer. Waiting.

The visual is a lot. Changbin’s hand covering his dick, jerking him off, twisting over the head. Hyunjin in front of him, eyes closed, lashes dark against his cheeks. He leans in, brushing the tip of his tongue against Jeongin’s slit, pushing his luck. No one reprimands him. Jeongin feels like he might pass out.

“Look how badly he wants it, Innie,” Changbin whispers, keeping pace. “Give it to him, baby. Go on. Give it to him.”

Jeongin makes a sound he’ll never admit to. Hyunjin’s tongue, the obscene perfect pink shade of it; Changbin’s hands, familiar, wrapped around him. His legs still spread open. He can’t think, the way he’s held, teased, touched – and wanted, after so long. He talks about it all the time. Jeongin bucks up into Changbin’s touch, whines at the sweet perfect pressure of it, the grind of skin on skin.

Come on, baby. You’ve been waiting for so long.

Jeongin comes to Changbin’s touch, the low rasp of his voice, watches the way it lands on Hyunjin’s tongue – and then, as he cries out again, his hips jerking, across his lips and up onto Hyunjin’s cheek. Evidence of presence, of desire. Irrevocable. Hyunjin shudders, makes a long low sound that turns into “Jeongin-ah, ” come painted across him – that front-page face, and it’s Jeongin who’s marked him up, Jeongin who’s covered him in white. The way a river bursts its banks: the flood short-lived, but the signs of it, the damage, longer-lasting, the bent rushes and the spill of mud impossible to take back. Hyunjin’s mouth wide open, moaning like he loves it.

His body shakes. Changbin holds him steady, hands on him, arms around him. Jeongin blinks, and blinks again, white spots in his vision. “Jeongin-ah,” Changbin breathes, containing a whole sentence in just his name. He shifts back on the couch a little, loosening his grip slightly, letting Jeongin slump down in his hold. His head is pounding, vision spinning. 

“Changbin-hyung,” Hyunjin says, just as loaded. He moves, pushing forward, up on his knees. Jeongin can barely stay awake long enough to see it, to watch as Hyunjin presses his lips against Changbin’s, Changbin licking along the seam of his lips. But there’s no way he’s looking away now, when Changbin drags his hand through the come on Hyunjin’s face, kisses him through it, whispering something into his mouth.

Yeah. He’s never getting over this.

(Hands smoothing over him. Something softer. Hushed voices.

He hears and doesn’t hear the strange timbre to Hyunjin’s rapid-fire murmur, Changbin’s lower staccato reply, clipped and maybe almost panicked, if Jeongin were to think about it; feels the way they settle around him. Weight and warmth and closeness. He thinks, almost all the way asleep, that he at least feels when Changbin comes: the tense and release of a body pressed against his. Warmth. Then, later, the same towel he’d used from Hyunjin’s bathroom, damp and rough and gentle, cleaning it away.

Creases in bottles. Hyunjin’s tongue against his slit. Give it to him, baby. There are dregs of hurt in his chest, but they seem more distant now – muted, as if seen through muddy river water. All the silt kicked up by the flood. Don’t you love me, maknae-yah? I do, Jeongin does and doesn’t dream of saying, I do, I always have – it settles in his chest like something soothed, the way he had when Changbin had murmured be good for hyung now, the way the earth filters itself out from the water. One day it will run blue again. Find the sea. Jeongin curls tighter into the long lines of Hyunjin’s body, feels pliant and new-made, like the brittle layer of his skeleton has been shed. He’ll find it in the morning. Put it back together. He’s almost asleep now; thinks of Felix’s lips, of soju. You’re going to have so much fun with Minho. Thinks of something burning in Chan’s eyes.

Not a promise, but something like it. The soft animal of desire. For a fossil to be made, it needs to die near a river, let the flood take it; molecule by molecule it turns into a different kind of stone. Lust-blown, or river-soft, a pebble tossed in white water.

Jeongin drifts half-asleep, thinking of the mouth of the river, and his come on Hyunjin’s tongue, and Changbin’s arm around him. He knows want, the way it sits in his bones. At last, he knows it sated too.)

ADULTS ONLY 🔞🔞🔞‼️

[ Minho-hyung ] Innie’s in a good mood today 🤔🤔

[ Hyunjinnie ] LISTEN

[ Hyunjinnie ] OKAY ILSTRN

[ Hyunjinnie ] IT DOESNT’COUNT. IF . we worked this out. We figured this out

[ Hyunjinnie ] WE only touched HIM. its not like hesuckd my dick or anything . so basically we didnt have SEX only took care of our innie

[ Felix-ah ] What the actual fuck are you talking about

Chapter Text

Jeongin wakes up alone, satisfied. Like something in the very marrow of him has been fulfilled. He’s in… Hyunjin’s room, maybe, blinds drawn even as the sun blurs around the edges of them. Beyond it, the gentle signs of life that come with the dawn. Footsteps, a tap running, a bowl chipping against countertop.

He’s missed living with them all, too many bodies in one place. Being here now makes him feel younger again, listening to everyone move around him. Someone’s left a pile of clothes at the end of the bed: his sweatpants from last night, folded neatly, and a clean t-shirt. Maybe Changbin’s, this time. He dresses, relishes the feeling of their clothes on his skin. They share things all the time, but it feels different now. Like this. To have it offered, ready, waiting.

He slips out of the room as quietly as he can manage; sunlight slants through the living room. There’s a moment before anybody notices him where he can just gaze at them – the two of them, Hyunjin and Changbin, moving around each other in the kitchen. Changbin has some sort of hellish-looking protein shake that Jeongin can almost taste behind his own teeth. Hyunjin is picking at sugary cereal that they’re probably not meant to have. Jeongin watches the way his body moves as he eats, the way that Changbin’s eyes go tawny in the light when he tilts his head, and – wants, in a soft sated sort of way. 

Then he stubs his toe on the coffee table. Swears. 

“Ayen-ah,” Hyunjin says, beet-red.

“Ah – hyung.” Jeongin curls his toes inside his socks. The dull pain settles down into nothing, rise and fall, tides of the ocean. “Sorry. Um.”

It’s not… awkward . They’ve seen each other in far worse states than last night. But it’s a different kind of knowing. He meets Hyunjin’s eyes and blushes too.

Changbin coos, putting on a stupid voice, “aigoo, Innie-yah,” abandoning his protein shake on the countertop and crossing the kitchen to squish Jeongin’s cheeks together, “so cute, aegi, our Jeonginnie!”

Like glass, the tension shatters. Some things do stay the same. Jeongin battles his way out of Changbin’s grip valiantly, until Changbin ducks in close and lands a hurried kiss on his pursed lips, hand still holding Jeongin’s jaw. The rules changed last night. Jeongin has no idea what game they’re playing now. He holds still for a moment too long, startled, and Changbin lets go of his chin, pulls away with a sort of horrid urgency.

Jeongin feels like he’s been slapped. Worse: like he’s been let down gently. He stands like an idiot in the middle of the room as Changbin backs down, not meeting his eyes; Hyunjin says hurriedly, too loudly, “Um. Jeonginnie. Do you want coffee?”

Jeongin swallows envy down with the bile; it’s all the bitter he needs. “I. I should get back,” he says. “I’m not supposed to be here.” Management will pick him up from the place he shares with Chan at nine-thirty for practice; Jeongin does not have an excuse. Not one that will fly in the face of his contract, not one that won’t shatter the open secret Chan has managed to spin between the seven of them and Jeongin has pretended not to see. 

“At least stay for breakfast,” Changbin says, even if he’s still blushing red, something shameful, “the company cars will pick you up from here. They won’t care.” Like it won’t have been the first time.

“I…”

Hyunjin puts a mug in his hands, curling his fingers around it one by one. “We didn’t… we don’t want it to be weird. Things to be weird.”

“Things aren’t weird,” Jeongin says, because it feels like something he should say.

They both look at him like he’s lying. Changbin sighs. “Jeonginnie. Baby.”

“Hyung –” Jeongin starts and does not finish. Changbin looks like he wants to throw up. Jeongin swallows. “It’s not weird. Things aren’t weird. I just… want to know where we stand.”

“Where we always stood,” Hyunjin says easily. Jeongin isn’t sure what that means; there’s a line in the sand here, and he’s stuck, alone, on one side of it. In the mess after the flood: river muck in all the places where the water had surged, out of place now that it’s receded.

“Hyung,” he says, “I don’t think that’s true.” No – the sort of bitter wanting in his chest gives him a strange sort of strength, says I’m tired of mincing my words. The more honest version: “I don’t want that to be true. I – I really liked it.” Briefly, memory rises around him – Hyunjin’s lips, Changbin’s bulk, the sense of being held and kept and wanted – and it doesn’t frighten him, only sits in his bones in the place where something’s shifted. He thinks his brain chemistry might have been fundamentally altered by the sensation of Hyunjin’s mouth around his cock. Or something equally ridiculous. “I’d – I’d do it again. If you wanted.” If you wanted me; if you wanted me like that – even now, there are some things that don’t quite bear spelling out.

“Jeongin-ah,” Changbin says. Not Innie, aegi, Ayen-ah. Jeongin lifts his chin to gaze directly at him, finds a sort of challenge rearing in his own chest; he wants Changbin to prove he can still look at him. Knows how he looks at this angle, all cheekbones and harsh lines. Changbin’s dark eyes are made a rich loam-brown by the sunlight, and he looks at Jeongin across his own living room, says: “Of course we want that.” 

Changbin doesn’t look at Hyunjin as he speaks, but Jeongin does. Watches the way Hyunjin’s face changes, the miniscule parts of his expressions: the crease by his eyebrow, the gentle curve of his lip, something familiar. “Changbin’s right,” Hyunjin agrees. “Of course we want that. How could we not?”

He sips the coffee Hyunjin had put in his hands. Feels all the words he hasn’t said sitting like rocks in the bottom of his stomach, washed down with rain and river water. One foot over the line. “So…”

“So,” Changbin says, “you should talk to Jisung. And maybe Felix. And then come back to us. At least… let Jisung explain a few things first. And we’ll wait for you.”

Jeongin is standing in their living room in their clothes. Sunlight trickles down into the cavity of his chest. “Okay,” he says, strangely dazed at the concept of wait for you, of the timbre of a promise in Changbin’s words. At the way Changbin says us, like it’s easy for him to speak on Hyunjin’s behalf. Jeongin doesn’t have that but he thinks he wants to. Thinks of the way Minho texts, sometimes, We’ll be late, and doesn’t specify who he means by the pronoun because Jisung is always with him when he does. Thinks of the way Felix had kissed him when no one else would, and the sort of scrunched-up hesitance written over Jisung’s face when Jeongin had said, I’m twenty-three, hyung, and – and wants, but now it’s a want with somewhere to go. The creek that finds its channel to the river. The long meandering road of the river to the sea.

He wrinkles his nose, looks at Hyunjin. “Do you really drink this every day?” he demands. The mug glows with warmth between his palms. “Aish, you’re terrible at making coffee. Get better.”

Glass shattering, between one breath and the next. Everything gets back on track. Hyunjin’s eyes grow wide, dramatic, and he makes a wild gesture like he’s going to fling his own mug across the room: “Yah, Yang Jeongin! After I slave away for hours making you a drink, providing for you, giving you the food out my cupboards and the clothes off my back, this is the thanks I get?!”

Jeongin picks at the hem of his t-shirt. The sleeves are all stretched out in a way that makes his stomach flutter. “This is Changbin’s, actually.”

“Don’t be so ungrateful to your hyung!” Hyunjin says, voice reaching an octave too high for so early in the morning. Jeongin laughs, dawn breaking, swallows another mouthful of coffee despite himself. “I’ll never give you anything again,” he declares. His words drown out the dull sound of Changbin thunking his forehead against the kitchen counter.

“The company car will be here in twenty minutes,” Changbin reminds them, mostly into the countertop, “just so we’re all ready to go.”

Jeongin plucks again at Changbin’s too-loose t-shirt, where it hangs around his biceps even though he’s bulked up lately. He could dance in this. “Thanks, hyung,” he says, soft and genuine, surprised to find he means it.

They’re the first to the practice room, ironically enough, except Chan, who goes a strange colour when he sees the three of them arrive together, like he’s trying for a gold medal in competitive blushing, and busies himself tidying an already-neat stack of notes on the table in the corner. Jeongin frowns, sets his jaw in a way that he hopes looks settled and unrepentant rather than mulish or bratty or young. He’s not done anything wrong.

He’s not doing anything wrong, when Hyunjin puts his arms over Jeongin’s shoulders, and Jeongin leans back into his chest. Maybe, before, he would have pulled away from the casual skinship. Instead, now, after, Chan’s eyes meet his when he relaxes in Hyunjin’s grip, and it’s like watching dawn cloud over Chan's face.

“You’re here early,” Changbin says, across the room, to Chan. “Or is everyone else late?”

Jeongin knows what Chan will say before he even opens his mouth. “The company car only had to wait for me. So,” and he shrugs, awkward, and turns back to fiddling with the sound system.

Jeongin scrambles for normalcy, says, “I don’t take that long to brush my teeth, hyung.” It falls flat in the air between them. Chan glances over his shoulder at Jeongin, something complex and almost guilty writ in the line between his brows, then checks his wrist and its nonexistent watch. Jeongin swallows down annoyance. The sharp bite of it isn’t as fun as usual, not when Chan seems – what’s the word? Not quite hurt, but something adjacent.

Thankfully, Felix and Seungmin spill into the room next, loud enough between the two of them – Seungmin sets immediately to heckling Changbin, and Felix gravitates Chan’s way, slower and softer-edged in the mornings – that the silence stings a little less. Jeongin lets himself settle into a corner, moves through some simple stretches with Hyunjin at his side. Touchier, maybe, but normal. (Not even touchier, actually – just that Jeongin’s letting himself be touched, doesn’t cringe away when Hyunjin comes up behind him to press him deeper into a forward hamstring stretch. Presses against the touch when he’s told to, then exhales, slips further into the bend of his body. Tries not to think about Hyunjin’s fingers digging into his thigh as he bobbed his head on Jeongin’s cock, or the way he’d looked with –

Normal thoughts. Practice room thoughts. Dancing.)

“Morning, maknae-yah,” Minho says, blowing air right into Jeongin’s ear. He hadn’t even noticed him and Jisung arriving, but when Jeongin turns around, Jisung has already draped himself over Felix’s shoulders. Minho is lurking at Jeongin’s side, eyes narrowed.

“What do you want, hyung?” Jeongin asks, a little sharper than he maybe intends it. Something in Minho’s face makes him feel – reactionary. 

“Is that any way to treat your elders?” Minho says, a reprimand, but he takes a step back. “You’re glowing today.”

“I got a new moisturiser,” Jeongin says. Well, he’s been using it for two weeks. Probably, it’s just starting to work.

Minho doesn’t look convinced. “Whatever you say, Jeonginnie,” he says, just before Chan calls for their attention. Minho waggles his eyebrows, lip curling suggestively, and then slinks away to pester Changbin about something. Like he knows.

That’s fine. Jeongin doesn’t care who knows. He has sex. So what. That’s… fine.

He moves easily today, caught up by a smattering of small joys despite the off-kilter misgiving squirming in his chest: a footwork sequence he’d drilled over and over last week springs to memory as though he’d never struggled with it at all, and Felix notices, grins at him with uncomplicated pride. Jeongin bickers with Seungmin, manages to make Seungmin laugh, which is a victory in itself. Later, he catches sight of himself in the mirror and almost does a double-take – sees the shape of his own form easy and confident, a gleam to his own eyes as though someone else has taken over his body and made it lived-in. Bright. The magic of it is momentary – once he catches his own eye it’s just his reflection, not that stranger who’d inhabited it under his hyungs’ eyes – but the memory lingers. Odd, to see yourself like that. To wonder if they see you like that too.

I see the way you look at me, he’d said. Now he wonders if he’d ever meant it. 

He hopes that this is the way they see him when they do look, at least. Competent, and strong, and beautiful in a way that feels like it comes from underneath his skin. Not just for the cameras. Jeongin uncaps a water bottle and drinks from it – too deeply, maybe, or his hands shaking from exertion. A drop of water spills out the corner of his mouth, running down his jaw. He scrubs at it hastily.

“Jeonginnie!” Jisung, replacing the cap on his own bottle, approaching. Looking a little… shy. Or maybe, off-kilter? Like someone has taken him apart and reassembled him wrong, bent out of shape. “Jeongin-ah. Minho-hyung told me to tell you that you were, um, doing really well today.”

Jeongin narrows his eyes at him. “He told you to tell me? You couldn’t just tell me of your own volition?” It should be a pattern Jeongin knows, the back-and-forth ripple of teasing between them, but Jisung seems to hesitate at his words. Just for a moment. It’s there and gone, and then the grin spreads its wings over Jisung’s cheeks, familiar and right.

“Sorry, did I say Minho-hyung? I meant the angel on my shoulder,” Jisung coos. He reaches for Jeongin’s cheek, and Jeongin smacks his hand away without really thinking about it. “Ow, Jeongin-ah.”

“Did you want something,” Jeongin says flatly. He doesn’t know why he’s being bitchy other than that it’s familiar, that he knows its steps; there’s a wrinkle to Jisung’s brow that he can’t quite work out.

Jisung stops, inhales, like he’s taking stock of every single part of his body. His mouth twists up, all scrunched and curled. “Ah… Jeonginnie, I just… wanted to apologise for the other day. Yesterday. I think I was really dismissive of your feelings and it must have been hurtful to – find out the way you did.”

“Did Minho-hyung tell you to say that, too?” Jeongin snaps, and then thinks better of it when Jisung’s eyes go wide and his mouth goes very small. That wasn’t fair, either. “I mean – sorry. I didn’t mean that. Thank you for apologising.”

“Minho-hyung didn’t tell me to say that,” Jisung confirms anyway, lifting a horrible sort of doubt from Jeongin’s chest. “Actually, he said you looked like you had a really good night and I think it’s… putting a lot of things in perspective. For everyone.”

“Like you’re just realising I have sex appeal?” Jeongin says. Still a little mean. Fuck. Jisung’s mouth goes tight and small again, but he doesn’t try to disagree. “Sorry. That still wasn’t fair.”

“We weren’t fair, either,” Jisung says. Too gracious. Too gentle. Face too kind, softened. “There is one thing I wanted to ask, though.”

Jeongin frowns. “What?”

Jisung shrugs, his cheeks flushing. Whatever the question is, Jeongin feels like he’s going to regret hearing it. “Just. Are you. Is it, uh.”

Jeongin narrows his eyes.

“Is it something you might do again with someone else,” Jisung says all at once, cheeks a vicious sort of pink. He isn’t looking at Jeongin; his hands are twisted into the loose, loose hem of his oversized dance shirt, knuckles paling. “Or. I mean. If it’s just – if it’s just hyung and Hyunjinnie then I – then that’s your decision. Obviously. I just.”

Jeongin blinks, recalibrates, looks a little closer. Wondering. Equal parts stunned and smug, neither quite winning out – he’d thought, in a sort of abstract way, that he’d known how Jisung looked at him, when he wasn’t busy sing-songing maknae-yah at every given opportunity. But for him to come over – to ask –

For a moment, Jeongin feels like the version of himself he’d seen in the mirror: angular and confident and sort of princely, living easily in his body, desirable. Heat prickles through him, starts in his hands and works its way up his forearms and into his torso, his legs. Embarrassed, maybe? Pleased. He feels abruptly like the blushing sexless teenager he’d been so bitter about them treating him like, the way the implication has him coming a little undone.

Jisung looks quickly at him, then away, lips twisting into something self-conscious and apologetic. Like Jeongin’s silence is its own answer. Jeongin scrambles for words, feels like he’s gold-panning in the silt, like surely if he kicks up the mud enough the answer will settle right onto his tongue, the perfect thing to say – and the Minho is glancing over, calling them back into formation, and the moment breaks. There’s only river-muck. A lost opportunity.

“Jeongin!” Minho calls again, stricter. Jisung is already taking his position. So Jeongin goes, too. He avoids Jisung’s eye in the mirrors, but feels him looking anyway. The way they all look at him.

The way he looks back. Dancing is possibly the hardest thing he’s ever had to do, now. He feels like – white water rapids, body tossed around, nothing to ground him. Jisung, watching him. Minho, too, eyes tracking his every movement. It’s a different kind of observation than they’re all used to. Being looked at by people who love you. He thinks about what Jisung said, about… if it’s just Hyunjin and Changbin.

Is it just Hyunjin and Changbin? Jeongin throws himself into the chorus. Maybe. He thinks about what it’s like to have the others touch him: Felix, last night. Minho, correcting his dance, or Chan, hands on his shoulder in the studio. Seungmin, fingertips touching. Jisung, lips on his cheeks, his shoulders. Never quite anywhere else. How could he ever not want… all of it.

(Jeongin, thrown into the chorus, throwing himself. The rapids of it. The flow of eight bodies moving together. On a good day, synchronicity settles into his bones like something fond and familiar: a current greater than himself, something he can trust to carry him, bear him onwards. 

How could he ever not want it?)

Someone brushes past him, slightly too close to be correct but just close enough to touch – the brush of it reassuring. In the moment Jeongin can’t even place who it might be. Doesn’t need to. The next second, someone stumbles, and it’s easy enough to tell they’re going to stop and run it again when Hyunjin starts laughing – Jeongin lets himself go still, watches them eddy around him, familiar, fond. He knows the shape of them. Felix pauses beside him for a moment while everyone else dashes for their water, no matter that Minho will give them shit for it when they’re not technically supposed to be taking a break; there’s something searching, soft-edged, in his eyes.

Jeongin catches himself before his eyes can dart to Felix’s lips, but it’s a close thing. God. The dam that broke. The storm that brought the flood. Can he be fucking blamed.

And then he looks up, feels something swirling through his body. Ripping him apart. Jisung, watching him in the mirrors.

“Why are you looking at Jisung like that?” Felix asks, under his breath. So no one else can hear him.

“Like what?”

Felix smiles at him, wry, like he knows something Jeongin doesn’t. “Like that.”

“What?” Jeongin frowns. A current, tearing through him. “I’m not looking at him like anything.”

“You are,” Felix says, “like… you want to eat him, or something.”

Like it’s not just Hyunjin and Changbin. Like it’s all of them. Obviously, it can’t be anything else. It’s so simple Jeongin almost laughs: the answer could just have been yes and it would have been enough. They know each other well enough. All the way through, every hidden current, every sharp stone under the surface.

Jeongin grins. Says under his breath to Felix, flippant, “I mean. I might.”

“Innie, ” Felix says, visibly delighted but pretending to be scandalised. A hand to his heart in the mirrors. He’s always worn laughter easily, shed it as quickly as he takes it off; he cuts Jeongin a brief, serious look before a smile shatters it again. “I think he was, uh, kind of nervous to talk to you. So you might wanna – I don’t know.”

“Yeah,” Jeongin says. “I’m – yeah.” Minho is standing with his phone in his hand, ready to unpause their guide track, looking unimpressed; impulse bubbles up in Jeongin’s chest like the clear water of a wellspring. Fleeting. Perfect. “Hyung,” he says. “Can I kiss you again?”

Felix; knowing, suspicious, always game. He grins. “You don’t even have to ask.” So that’s easy, too, Felix getting his lips on Jeongin’s, arms around his neck, hands splayed over his shoulders. Jeongin puts his hands on Felix’s waist, feels the flex of his core muscles, rubs his thumb over the line of Felix’s stomach. Touching. Felix kisses him like there’s nothing else he could possibly want to be doing.

Minho clears his throat. “We don’t get paid for this, you know.”

Felix laughs against his mouth, head tipping forward to bump their noses together. He pulls away to talk to Minho, unlooping his arms from Jeongin’s neck. “We could. Besides, I don’t think any of you are complaining.”

They’re all watching. Jeongin looks in the mirror again, at the image of Felix’s body against his, and the rest of them, dispersed across the room. All looking. He meets Jisung’s eyes, and then Felix’s. All knowing. All seeing.

“All of you are perverts,” he says primly. Someone laughs – Jeongin thinks it might be Minho, but he isn’t sure, doesn’t need to be. His eyes flicker to Jisung’s again. There’s something complex written across Jisung’s stare in the mirror, the edge of embarrassment, something light and dark in equal measure.

“Perverts who need to finish learning this routine,” Minho says, eyebrows twitching, corralling them all like puppets. “Lix-ah, take your hands off of the maknae. Everybody focus.”

Minho’s words are clear. Jeongin looks at Jisung once more, at the depth in his eyes, the tension in his limbs. He keeps watching even once Minho presses play, the stiffness with which Jisung moves. An imperfection that no one seems to call upon; a wound Jeongin wants to dig his fingers into.

The track ends. Jisung beside him, like moth to flame. Jeongin gravitates to him. Why are you looking at Jisung like that? He’s not looking at him like anything. 

“Are we going to get anything done today?” Minho, again, voice ringing through Jeongin’s entire body. “Yah. Chan-ah, sort your kids out.”

Chan, unfortunately, is busy staring at Jisung too. Jeongin gets it: Jisung’s hair is matted with sweat and his cheeks are flushed red, eyes bright with adrenaline. Jeongin wonders if this is – if this is what he looks like during sex, if that’s a thing he’s allowed to even wonder about now. Now all the lines have been broken.

Felix looks at him in the mirror, seconds before Minho opens his mouth again. Felix tips his head in Jisung’s direction; a sign. An instruction, maybe.

“Five minute break?” Chan suggests again, sounding dazed. As if they didn’t just have one. Minho throws his hands in the air, exasperated, but doesn’t bother arguing. He just puts his palm on the back of Chan’s neck, firm and weighted. Jeongin watches the way Chan shivers under his touch, the way he relents, feeling like he’s never really seen Chan before in his life.

He’s aware, vaguely, of Felix slowly fielding Hyunjin and Seungmin out of the practice room. Minho and Chan make suspicious eye contact and sequester themselves in the furthest corner. Changbin joins them, accepted into their fold easily. Jisung floats, in the centre of the room, and Jeongin revolves around him.

“It’s not,” he says, unsure quite how to broach it now. He’s not – not shy . Really. Jisung looks at him. Up close, the flush of exertion seems to melt into something more akin to shame. Rejection. “Um. It’s not just Hyunjin or Changbin.” Jisung’s eyes widen. “That I want to do stuff with. Felix said I should talk to you.”

“Felix seems to be saying a lot of things right now,” Jisung says. He looks lost, a little, alone in the centre of the practice room. Even if everyone else orbits around him. “And doing.”

Jeongin shrugs. Some part of it still hurts, a little. That Felix is the only one who’d seemed capable of treating him like an adult. “I guess,” he says, and then, stepping closer to Jisung, intentional. “He’s not the only one who could do things.”

“Innie –”

“Jisung-hyung,” Jeongin echoes, already tasting the rejection before Jisung even opens his mouth. 

“We – we shouldn’t,” Jisung says, echoing words that don’t quite sound like his. “But I… I want to. Jeonginnie.”

“Because all the rest of you always do what you should, ” Jeongin says, sharp and a little bitter, the sting of it flooding his mouth. “Why is it different for me, hyung?”

Jisung swallows – but when he speaks, it’s clear, sounds practiced but genuine, like he’d spent longer than he should have in the mirror trying to work out exactly what he wanted to say. It doesn’t sound like fucking Minho speaking through him, or Chan, or even Changbin. “We got too used to protecting you, aegi,” he says, and the pet name – abrades, in the raw part of Jeongin’s chest that still hurts, but it’s not saccharine, just slips out like it’s easy, like Jisung is so used to being sweet with him that he doesn’t know how to speak any other way. “Um. Maybe overcompensated. But I – I want to take care of you. I want to –” His throat works again. Jeongin kind of wants to lick it. He is standing in the middle of his place of work with his seven coworkers and has normal thoughts that are safe for work.

But the others aren’t… aren’t even paying attention right now. He can hear the low murmur of voices from Chan’s direction, but not what they’re saying. Jeongin looks long and hard at Jisung. The stretch of skin across his cheekbones, the depth of his eyes, the slow and gentle curve of his lip. 

“How?” Jeongin asks. Playing with fire. The mouth of the river; boiling over.

Jisung makes a punched out sort of sound, guttural. Unconfined. Raw. His entire body shudders and ripples, something moving through him. “God, Jeonginnie. However you want. Anything you want.”

“ Anything ?”

“Yes, yeah, I – want to kiss you, and touch you and –” words pouring from Jisung like floodgates opened. “Anything. Hyunjinnie said you were – you were really –”

News travels fast. Not that Jeongin didn’t expect that, but it’s different. Knowing they talked about him like that. Liking that they did. “I was really what?”

“Ah, Jeonginnie -”

“Break’s over,” Minho says insouciantly, closer than Jeongin remembers him being even though his voice is pitched to carry. Jeongin can’t be sure, but he doesn’t think he imagines the smile tugging at the edge of Minho’s mouth. The way his eyes dart sideways to Jisung.

“Let me come back with you,” Jisung blurts. “Tonight. Please. I want to –”

“For fuck’s sake,” Chan says, bluster stretched taut over exhaustion, over something like worry; Jeongin thinks he should care more, but can’t quite bring himself to. His blood shudders in his ears. Jisung looks insistent, desperate, spots of colour high on his cheeks even beneath the foundation; he looks like Jeongin has felt for years. Like desire behind a dam. Like love with nowhere to go. Like he’s been looking at Jeongin all along, and Jeongin is finally, finally looking back.

“Well,” Jeongin says. The river yawns in his chest, the empty space of want. “Since you said please, hyung, I guess I have to let you.”

Jisung’s smile hovers in his chest for the rest of the session: burning, brilliant, impossible.

Taking Jisung home with him is familiar and unfamiliar. Jeongin’s stomach tenses. No one says a word when they walk out of the practice room together. Not even Chan. They get in one of the company cars together and Jeongin can feel the kinetic energy sparking off of Jisung, bouncing around the car. Tense. Unstoppable.

“What did Hyunjin say about me?” Jeongin asks, in the gentle quietness of the back seats. Part of him doesn’t want to know. But he wants Jisung to think about it.

Jisung blinks hard. “Just… that he had a lot of fun,” he says, although this is clearly not the full truth. Jeongin lifts an eyebrow at him, and Jisung relents. “That you were a tease. And you were really… really hot.”

“What do you think, hyung?”

Jisung swallows. He’s a study in stillness and motion – usually frenetic, but now it’s all beneath his skin as he keeps to his own side of the backseats. Jeongin reaches out a leg to knock their ankles together. “I think,” Jisung says, hoarse and fervent, “he knows what he’s talking about.” The grease trickles back into his tone like daylight through curtains: “I’d have to see for myself, though. You know. To be sure.”

“Does that line really work on hyungs?” Jeongin says, derisive.

Jisung laughs. “No. They just give in out of pity.” It’s a joke, but – there’s something running beneath the current of his voice, something unsteady.

Jeongin closes his eyes, traces the pattern of the river. “I don’t think that’s true, hyung,” he says. He swallows. The glimpses he’d stolen over the years – the taper of Jisung’s impossible waist, the swell of his chest – God, the glimmer in his eyes when he was confident, the brilliance living beneath his skin – Jeongin shivers. “I. Um. I think anyone would be stupid not to want you.” Longer ago – further upriver – he still remembers, before the bright hair or the flawless makeup or the awards, the way Jisung had smiled when he’d introduced himself. Ducked his head. A sort of idle power to him, unselfconscious, not quite overwrought enough to be obnoxious but just enough, in the way that he carried himself, to – catch the eye. “I. I always did, you know. Even back then.”

Something – surprised settles on Jisung’s face. Like he doubts it. Jeongin knows they’ve all struggled with this, with finding confidence in between the lines they’re given. But it’s always been far removed from him. Another way to… to protect him. Jisung tips his head back against the car headrest. “Aish, Jeongin-ah. You can’t just say things like that.”

“Like what?”

He watches Jisung’s eyes drift closed, profile silhouetted by the afternoon sun. “Like that. We really fucked up, didn’t we?”

“We’re going home together, anyway,” Jeongin says. Something still smarts about it, dulled a little. “I… understand. I think.”

Jisung sighs. “We’ll make it up to you. I’ll give anything to you.”

“Not here,” Jeongin says. Not in their company car. If he squints his eyes, he can see the shadow of cameras strapped to the back of the seats. A kind of observation. Not the kind he wants right now.

Jisung snorts. “I mean, I wasn’t planning on it.”

“Ha, ha.”

The afternoon melts golden around them; Jeongin gets out of the car before Jisung does, keying in the door code with shaking fingers. He knows the apartment he shares with Chan inside and out, but – it seems different in this light. As though everyone can tell what he’s doing here. What he’s dared to want. Like he’s still soju-tipsy and dreaming, and the mist is about to burn off with the dawn. Jisung bumps their shoulders together when Jeongin stands frozen for a moment too long, and Jeongin scowls mechanically, toes off his shoes in the entryway, glances up to Jisung with a half-formed question on his lips.

Then Jisung is kissing him, crowding him against the wall, messy and wanting and fervent. It’s different to the way Changbin kissed him, and Felix, in ways that send ripples down his spine, electricity sparking through Jeongin’s nervous system. Jisung’s lips are soft, his mouth open wide and grazing Jeongin with his teeth.

“Ah – Jisung-hyung –”

Jisung’s hands, running up and down his flank, digging fingernails into the dips of Jeongin’s hips, his abs, moving up to caress his ribs. “Hm?”

“You –” Jeongin feels entirely overwhelmed. Like Jisung has taken ownership of his body, ungrounded him, untethered. He tips his head back against the wall, plaster cold against his skin. “God.”

Jisung laughs. “You have no idea how long I’ve been waiting to do that,” he says, delighted. Attractive. Attract- ed . Which is an entirely different headrush, one that makes Jeongin’s knees feel a little weak.

He doesn’t say why didn’t you –, doesn’t say you didn’t need to wait, finds it easier to swallow that little bitter spike when Jisung is this close, impossible and brilliant with swollen lips. Instead he only tilts his head, winds his own hands around Jisung’s waist. Feels the way Jisung trembles, then. “What, hyung?” Jeongin mumbles, tugging at him. His brain is somewhere between the white noise roar of floodwater and a sweet sort of quiet, like desire through the circuits of his body has settled him into his own bones.

Jisung’s breath audibly catches in his chest. He mumbles something; Jeongin catches the word hands and little else. His mouth attaches itself to Jeongin’s neck, head still tipped against the wall, and Jisung’s lips are tender and searching against his skin. He presses open-mouthed kisses to the column of Jeongin’s throat, careful not to leave marks with an ease that can only come from practice.

“How often –” Jeongin tries, and then inhales sharply. Jisung removes his teeth from Jeongin’s flesh, still gentle. “How often?”

“How often what?”

Jeongin isn’t sure if he wants this answer. He keeps asking anyway. “How often do you do this with the others?”

Jisung pulls back a little. Earnest. Truthful. “Not often. But… not that rare, either.”

Jeongin nods once. As expected. And now, demanding: “Kiss me again.”

Jisung groans, throaty and earnest and raw-edged, and does. His lips move slick and messy against Jeongin’s; his hands work their way over the planes of Jeongin’s torso like he can’t decide where he wants to touch and has settled on trying for everywhere at once. His stomach. The curves of his triceps. The hem of his shirt, Jisung’s fingers a strange interplay of rough and soft where his guitar calluses are moisturised into nothing because the company finds them undesirable – and then the heat of them on his bare skin, skimming up the length of his back. Jisung groans again into Jeongin’s mouth. 

Jeongin feels lightheaded, wanted, the way that Jisung has come so undone and it’s because he – what? Wants Jeongin, or wants to touch Jeongin, or wants to fuck him, maybe. Jeongin, though. And wants. Jeongin trembles against him, beneath his touch, the way it’s featherlight over his scapulas and then a deep insistent pressure on the dip of his waist, here one moment, gone the next, too fleeting to get used to and just enough to have him spilling open at the seams. Stitches unpicked. Stuffing and guts tossed in the current.

Jisung’s hands settle trembling onto Jeongin’s hipbones. He says, sounding half-dazed, “Iyen-ah, Jeonginnie, Jeongin-ah – fuck, you’re so – want you so bad.”

“You too, hyungie,” Jeongin manages, choking out, swallowing his words and as much oxygen as he can get as one, sticking to his tongue, silt and river water, dregs in the back of his throat. “I wanna –”

He can’t finish his sentence before Jisung breaks away from him long enough to pull Jeongin’s shirt off, tossing it away somewhere in the entryway. “Less talking,” Jisung instructs, desperate in a way that is deeply familiar. “More kissing.”

The wall is cold against Jeongin’s bare skin. They’re still – in the hallway. Anyone could come in right now. Well, only Chan. And he probably won’t. But still – “Here?”

“You want to wait any longer?” Jisung says, and then he’s getting to his knees right there and then, staring up at Jeongin with wide, desperate eyes. “Come on, Yen-ah. You don’t know how badly – how long I’ve wanted this for.”

“You did that to yourself,” Jeongin snarks before he can think better of it. He winds a hand into Jisung’s hair where it’s growing out a little at the nape of his neck; something hits him hard in his gut at the way Jisung looks up at him, flushed everywhere between his ears and his throat, a little vicious coil of hunger. Jisung on his knees. Probably hard, Jeongin thinks, a little uncharitably; doesn’t know and at the same knows all too well where this vindictiveness is coming from. Jisung’s lips are parted in something self-flagellating, and Jeongin deflates, adds, “I’m. Sorry, hyung. I didn’t mean it.”

“You could have,” Jisung says, hoarse, throaty. “I’m – I’m not above begging, Iyen-ah. You could make me.”

The words take a moment to crystallise, settling into their shape, the way they refract desire and colour through them until they’re too solid to be taken back, too brittle to do anything except shine or shatter. Jeongin’s hand in Jisung’s hair. Jisung on his knees, God. In the fucking hallway next to the shoe rack. Jeongin chooses his own words carefully, like treading through a house he doesn’t know in the dark: “Jisung-hyung,” he says, “I don’t think it would take a whole lot of persuading. I think you just want an excuse to beg and you’re going to do it whether or not I make you.” It’s easier once he’s gathered momentum, and Jeongin is sort of teasing and sort of not, caught between something warm and playful and the way that this half-wrought viciousness soothes something jagged inside him: “So go on, then. Convince me.”

The breath Jisung intakes is ragged, dragging in the air between them. His mouth opens, lips parting, saliva stringing between them. “Jeongin-ah. Let me – let me suck you off. You can, you can use me, whatever you want. Please. Let me.”

The image he makes is tempting, desire tugging at Jeongin’s stomach in a visceral sort of way, a way that makes him feel like he could fall over with it, consumed entirely. He moves his hand from Jisung’s hair to curl around his cheek, fitting his fingers over his cheekbone and his thumb to pull at Jisung’s bottom lip, exposing his teeth. Jisung’s tongue flicks out, licking the pad of his thumb.

“Try harder, hyung,” Jeongin says, murmurs, voice low. “If you’re as desperate as you say.”

Jisung’s entire body shudders. He turns his head a little, fitting Jeongin’s thumb in his mouth properly, sucking on it, swirling his tongue around it. Jeongin doesn’t press down, just lets him work. Waits. There’s no sting or rasp of teeth, only the warm wet pressure of his tongue, mapping Jeongin’s knuckle, his blunt nail, the joint where his thumb meets his hand as Jisung takes it deeper. His eyes have fluttered closed. Like he likes it. Like he wants it. Jeongin feels lightheaded, unsteady, in a mirror version of his own hallway, a familiar place turned upside down by Jisung sucking on his thumb to earn the right to suck his cock. Chan’s stupid denim jacket hangs in Jeongin’s periphery. Jeongin’s finger is in Jisung’s mouth.

And it’s Jisung, is the thing. Not just a man on his knees, or Jeongin’s hyung in his apartment, but some impossible meeting of the two: Han Jisung, face flushed and warm and oddly relaxed, getting drool all over Jeongin’s thumb. It’s not like Jeongin has never thought about him like this. Not like he’s never wondered. But this – it seems impossible. Jeongin thinks of the figure he’d seen wearing his own skin in the practice room mirror, some larger-than-life version of himself, and thinks, Maybe I get to have this. Maybe I get to want this.

“Hyung,” he says, raw, a little choked. “Jisung-hyung.”

Jisung’s eyelids twitch. He blinks his eyes open, looking upwards. He swallows around Jeongin’s thumb, eyes hazy, limbs loose, like his seams are coming undone. He pulls away from Jeongin’s hand. “Jeonginnie – please. Please let me suck your dick.”

Stronger men would crumble, probably. Jeongin finds himself nodding, leaning back against the wall for strength. His eyes flicker to the front door; locked, but they all have a key. Everyone knows, surely, that they’ve come back here for – for this. Chan could… could come home. Jisung’s hands scrabble at the waistband of his pants, fingers desperate and shaking. “Jeongin-ah,” Jisung says, calling his attention again. There’s something tender-edged in his gaze, startlingly put together given how undone he’d seemed only a moment ago, though his hand is still trembling a little against Jeongin’s waistband; he says, hesitant, “You’re sure?”

“Don’t wait too long or I might change my mind,” Jeongin gripes, but he fumbles to take one of Jisung’s hands in his own anyway, squeezes it once, reassuring. Something comes alight and sweet in Jisung’s gaze as he squeezes back.

“I’ve been told I can ruin guys for head from anyone else, you know,” Jisung says, greasy and conspiratorial and utterly obnoxious. Jeongin is about to tell him as much. Then Jisung presses his lips open-mouthed against Jeongin’s pants, searching for the outline of his cock, and the words swim away from each other like so many birds taking flight, leaving a power-line behind. Only the dull throb of arousal. Of sensation, even clothed. Jeongin shudders, squeezes Jisung’s hand again, as tight as he can, so that he doesn’t do something more embarrassing like whack Jisung in the eye with his hipbone as he jerks into the touch.

It’s not, like, the most intense thing Jeongin has ever felt. But it floats around in his head; there’s something different about it, about it being Jisung, about being in the hallway of the apartment he shares with Chan, about Jisung being on his knees in front of him. At least with Hyunjin and Changbin, everything had been split between them, equal weight carried on two pairs of shoulders. Now, everything is on Jisung. And him. Jisung’s breath is hot against his cock, even through the fabric of his pants, and his mouth feels wet already, and it takes everything in Jeongin not to thrust into his mouth. 

It doesn’t seem like the worst thing in the world, after all. To be ruined after this. “Hyunjin could give you a run for your money,” is what Jeongin actually says, head tipped against the wall, and Jisung’s huffed laughter against his crotch makes his dick throb.

“That’s fair,” Jisung murmurs. The cockiness has drained from him a little, and he traces a little circle on Jeongin’s hipbone with the back of his nail, right above the waistband of his low-slung dance sweatpants, which he realises a moment later are still sweaty from practice. Christ. At least Jisung isn’t any better – his hair, when Jeongin reaches for it, is a little brittle with his own dried sweat. Jisung presses affectionately into the touch, then murmurs, “Okay, Jeongin-ah?”

Not Ayennie. Not don’t you love me, maknae-yah? Jeongin thinks he might give a different response. Everything is different like this: transfixed in the fucking hallway, with Chan’s coat slung on the rack and Jeongin’s umbrella by the door, with Jisung pressing open-mouthed against Jeongin’s clothed cock. He feels unsteady on his feet. Like it’s not entirely real. “Jisung-hyung,” he says, voice embarrassingly wobbly, and doesn’t quite know what he’s asking for. 

“Please,” Jisung says huskily. The fucking prodigy of a man that Jeongin’s wanted since they were both boys; brilliant, impossible Jisung, who could have anybody in the world and has gone to his knees for Yang Jeongin. Who could have Minho, or Hyunjin, or Felix, or – and the list goes on, and instead he says, in that low searching voice, Please. Jeongin barely feels in control of his own body, knees embarrassingly weak at even the hint of pressure on his dick – but here, Jisung is saying, is something else he can be in control of. Here, at least, is something he can choose.

“Yeah,” Jeongin murmurs. Jisung tugs at his sweatpants, down, down. “Yeah.”

The time between Jisung pulling at his waistband and getting his mouth around Jeongin’s cock – bare, half the way down, tongue pressing against the head – passes so quickly Jeongin gets whiplash, maybe. Or it’s just Jisung, steadying Jeongin with hands on his thighs, forcing Jeongin’s cock down his throat until he almost gags around it and Jeongin wants to pass out.

Actually, he might. Jisung swallows. He sucks dick with a ferocity he reserves for things like – like making music, or dancing, or annoying Seungmin. With fervour. He wraps his hand around the length of Jeongin’s dick uncovered by his mouth, and opens his eyes and stares straight up at Jeongin. Fuck. Jeongin really might pass out. Jisung wouldn’t judge him, probably. 

The world feels scattered around him: snippets of sensation that whirl past and through Jeongin like things in orbit. Jisung’s burning-dark eyes. The cool plaster against the back of Jeongin’s head. His hands in Jisung’s sweat-brittle hair. Things that shouldn’t be hot but make his knees weak anyway: Chan’s fucking coat directly level with Jeongin’s eyeline, and the way Jisung’s other hand is trembling a little against Jeongin’s upper thigh, and the way his sweatpants are gathered awkwardly around his ankles because he hadn’t even stepped out of them all the way before Jisung’s lips were on his cock. 

“Hyung,” Jeongin says. The way his own voice is startlingly level, even as he feels like he’s breaking apart. The answering hum around his dick. The bob of Jisung’s Adam’s apple as he swallows again around Jeongin, and the cool implacable metal of his fucking ring pressing gently into the base of Jeongin’s dick where his hand is wrapped around it, and – and Jeongin’s legs trembling, and he doesn’t want this to be done. Doesn’t want this to be over. “Hyung,” he says again, insistent, tugging Jisung away from his cock even as he fights against the urge to push him back down onto it. (An image, swimming into his mind and then away again, of Jisung teary-eyed – Jeongin clenches his hand so hard into Jisung’s hair he thinks he might have actually hurt him.)

“What is it?” Jisung asks, and already his voice is a little thick, scratched, like he’s been. Well. Like he’s been sucking dick. Jeongin hopes it’s healed by morning; he won’t hear the end of it, otherwise. “Innie?”

“Just,” Jeongin pauses for a second, catches his breath. Relishes, a little bit, in the vaguest sense of embarrassment from almost coming so quickly. “If you keep doing that, I’ll –”

Jisung’s eyes widen a little, dark beneath his eyelashes, pupils twice as big as usual. His lips curl up, satisfied and a little proud. He keeps his hand curled around Jeongin’s dick, holding tight and then stroking slowly. “You’ll what, Jeonginnie?”

The pressure is faint, barely there. It makes Jeongin want to slam his head into a wall. He can feel phantom hands, fingers that feel like Jisung’s, reaching down his throat and pulling the words back out of it. “I’ll – I’ll come, Jisung-hyung.”

“Oh, no,” Jisung says, but he’s grinning, smug and a little obnoxious. His hand works at the base of Jeongin’s cock. Jeongin can’t think. “Poor Iyennie, hm – what a horrific unforeseen consequence –”

“You’re horrible,” Jeongin says automatically, even as he lets his head tip back against the wall again, little trembles radiating out through his entire body from where Jisung is still touching him. He feels more than hears Jisung’s laugh; it strikes some chord in his gut he can’t name. Like hitting a note on the first try. Like looking in the mirror and seeing yourself looking back. Desire ripples thick and choking through his body, but it’s softer-edged than the white water, like – like he wants something other than to shove his cock so far down Jisung’s throat he chokes. Like he wants – like – like the way some of them look at each other. Like the way some of them look at him. Jeongin’s knees almost honest-to-God give out as Jisung works his fingers so fucking tenderly, gently, over Jeongin’s dick, and he huffs, says, “Hyung. Hyung. ”

“Okay, okay,” Jisung says, leaning back in to fit his lips around Jeongin’s cock, and then stopping with his mouth posed at the tip. Jeongin’s hips jump forward automatically, trying to push into Jisung’s mouth and Jisung moves backwards and laughs like he expected it.

Jeongin groans. “You’re such a – fucking brat.”

Jisung just laughs again, kissing the head of Jeongin’s dick, tonguing around it. His breath is warm over Jeongin’s cock, lips plush and tender, spit slick. “I’ll make it up to you. You want me to make you come?” And Jeongin’s hips twitch again. A little embarrassing. He can’t be faulted for it, when Jisung’s fingers ghost over his skin, the tender flesh of his thighs, his balls. Jisung’s stupid grin, his teeth, biting into his lip. “I’ll make you come, Ayen-ah. Let me make you come.”

Jeongin shudders. It doesn’t quite feel real, any of this. “It’s – are you sure?” he says, aiming for acerbic or teasing and ending up more in the realm of gentle, uncertain, unsteady. “It’s been like five minutes, I don’t –” The thing is that it’s kind of impossible to hold on. The thing is that Han Jisung and his face card are unparalleled even when his lips aren’t curved halfway into that smirk and swollen from sucking cock. Or maybe the thing is that Jisung holds him like he’s something precious, and dropped to his knees in the entryway like he couldn’t wait, and Jeongin wants him, has always wanted him. Can’t quite believe he gets to have this now. Is waiting for the other shoe to drop, pressed up against the wall in between the coats and the umbrellas and the keys hanging on their hooks.

Jisung smooths a hand over his bare thigh again. Says, “It’s okay, Iyennie. I don’t – I wouldn’t do this if I didn’t want it.” His eyes are so fucking dark. Desire coils through Jeongin like oil through water, settling on the surface of him in a way that feels almost iridescent. Jisung looks at him like there’s something else entirely, something altogether unsaid, written in the shapes they make together – then grins, tilts his head. Says, “Hyung’s got you, Iyen-ah. You wanna come down my throat?”

He feels – shellshocked. Swept away. Jeongin’s vision blurs and then refocuses on Jisung again, sharper than before. His knees feel weak. Jisung looks like there’s nowhere he’d rather be right now. Probably there isn’t. “Fuck,” Jeongin says, eloquently. The part of his brain that wants, that knows desire, the part he tries to keep in check, rears its head. His concern for Jisung’s knees, or his hips or his throat, falls by the wayside. “Yes. Yeah, I want to.”

Jisung’s smile grows sharper, full of teeth. He doesn’t say anything else; doesn’t need to. He leans forward again and takes Jeongin back into his mouth, properly this time. Most of the way down, closing his lips around Jeongin’s cock, pressing the flat of his tongue against the head. It’s a little embarrassing how quickly it brings Jeongin to the edge. Possibly, it’s the visual. Jisung, on his knees in front of him, looking like this gives him just as much pleasure as it’s giving Jeongin. His fringe, tinged brown but mostly black in the low light, falling over his forehead, eyelashes shadowing his eyes, cheeks flushed the same pink as his lips.

Possibly, everything else. The fact that it’s Jisung. That Jeongin is even standing here in the first place. The river rushes around him, threatens to pull him under, in way over his head. In way over his head. Jisung swallows around his dick. Jeongin bites back a moan. And then Jisung pulls off again, and Jeongin really does groan.

“You’re doing an awful lot of thinking when I’m sucking your dick, Jeongin-ah,” Jisung says, blinking his eyes open, looking a little insulted about it.

“You’re doing an awful lot of talking,” Jeongin snipes back, honestly very impressed with himself when all the words come out in the right order. When Jisung huffs a laugh, he’s so close that Jeongin can feel the air of his exhale against his skin. Even that sensation ripples through him twofold: the physicality of it, of the brush of breath on his cock, but also the undue intimacy that comes with Jisung this close. Like Jeongin’s never seen him before. Like Jeongin’s never really dared to wonder about. Abruptly, unbidden, he feels a stab of something like jealousy: not even I don’t want anyone else to have this, but couldn’t I have always had this too? It swells and bursts in his chest, a thick ugly raindrop landing heavy on his ribs. One drop in the river. One way back to the ocean.

“Sorry, Jeonginnie,” Jisung coos, batting his eyelashes in a way that starts overwrought and saccharine and abruptly becomes heated. Jeongin groans, his hips canting forward without any input from his brain. Then Jisung is swallowing him down again, and abruptly he’s so close he feels lightheaded, the flash flood of it bearing down on him: the crossed-wire harmony of guilt and pleasure and want, of jealousy and Jisung’s mouth around him and Chan’s coat still sitting in his fucking eyeline, of like and lust and – and something else. Something he can never say.

“Jisung,” he gasps. “Jisung-hyung, fuck –”

Jisung doesn’t stop this time, doesn’t pause to talk or flirt or interrupt. His throat tightens around Jeongin’s cock, moving his tongue in a way Jeongin doesn’t even understand but just knows it feels good. He gets one hand tangled in Jisung’s hair, pulling it too tightly to be comfortable, but it makes Jisung hum a moan around Jeongin’s dick and that makes Jeongin feel like he’s really about to fall over.

“Hyung, I’m going to – I’m going to –”

He isn’t sure what Jisung’s intention is right now, but he loosens his grip on his hair in case he wants to pull off. But Jisung makes no move to; if anything, he doubles down, swallowing around Jeongin’s cock, moving up and down it so far Jeongin wonders how he isn’t gagging. 

“Jisung-hyung –” is all Jeongin manages before sparks start shooting up and down his spine. His eyelids fall shut, squeezing together tightly. Jeongin feels every single one of his blood vessels contract, and then expand again at once, blood rushing through his body.

His orgasm is a slow curl of pleasure, something that doesn’t have tangible ends or beginnings but really just is. Something that Jisung pulls out of him and then when Jeongin is sure there’s nothing else left, he pulls out more. He collapses back against the wall, feeling a little like he might slide down it into a puddle on the floor if Jisung doesn’t let up soon. If he doesn’t stop swallowing around Jeongin’s cock, eyes fluttered shut.

“Hyung –!”

Jisung pulls off, blinking his eyes open again. He swallows once more, throat working. Jeongin tracks every movement of it, and then feels even more lightheaded. There’s a satisfaction, a satedness, tugging lazily at the corner of Jisung’s mouth; he seems almost smug. Just from sucking Jeongin off. Like this, just this, was its own kind of high from him. Joy fizzles high and abrupt through Jeongin’s body, cresting so quickly it’s almost alarming: like the adrenaline high of being on stage, he thinks, like the giddy impossible sensation of living a pipe-dream, but it’s just – being wanted. Jisung looking at him, gleeful, still wanting. Jeongin shudders, says again, “Hyung, ” thinks it comes out – softer than he really intends. Sappy around the edges. The flash-flood high means he doesn’t even really care; so what if Jisung knows Jeongin wants him too? Has he not always? Has it not always been a base fucking truth to the core of the eight of them, that they want each other, in whatever way they can or cannot have?

“I want –” Jeongin swallows around his own words the way Jisung had swallowed around his cock, pleasure still fizzling shocky and abrupt through his body. He slides down the wall until he’s level with Jisung: eye to eye. The mole on Jisung’s cheek. The split ends of his hair. The ways Jeongin knows him that others never will; the tent in Jisung’s loose dance pants. Jeongin palms at it, clumsy but earnest, and relishes the shiver that runs through Jisung’s whole body at the contact. “Hyung. Hyung, ” he says again, like it’s the only word he knows. (It’d be efficient, if he did. Seven ways to say I want you, tied neatly into a bow.)

But something in Jisung tenses up a little, something that makes him twitch and then shift backwards on his knees, eyes wide, not in a fun way. “Jeonginnie –”

“Jisung-hyung, let me –” Jeongin furrows his brow. He… doesn’t understand. Why Jisung is leaning away from him. “Let me touch you. Let me suck you off.”

Jisung blinks his stupid big eyes. “Ah, Jeonginnie. Aegi-yah. You can’t. You have recording tomorrow.”

“So?”

“So, your voice,” Jisung says, like it’s obvious and he isn’t just grasping at straws. Jeongin frowns even deeper. Something tenuous threads between Jisung’s words, something he isn’t saying. “Chan-hyung would kill both of us if you go to a recording with your throat all scratched up.”

“You have recording tomorrow, too,” Jeongin points out. Fine, maybe it’s different, when Jisung is the one who writes and produces and composes the songs and Jeongin just sings them. “Your throat is all…” he gestures vaguely. It’s not exactly scratchy, but there’s something a little thick and gravelly in his voice.

Jisung won’t meet Jeongin’s eyes. “It’s different,” he insists, and it sounds like he doesn’t mean their voices. 

Something curls into a ball in Jeongin’s stomach, a river-tossed stone settling into his guts. It’s – “That sounds like an excuse,” he points out, mildly, voice carefully level, as dispassionate as he can make it. Like it’s not the whole truth, or not what Jisung really means, or – something. But – “It’s okay if you don’t – I mean – I don’t need to. Sorry.” Jeongin swallows. He doesn’t know what skin to occupy here, who he is when faced with Jisung hard in his pants and still leaning away from him, what it means that his skin is still buzzing, his body still loose and uncoiled, from an orgasm that definitely makes his top two, at least, in the past eight years; something is nagging at him, maddening and impossible to put his finger on. “Uh. If you don’t want me to. That’s fine.”

“Jeonginnie,” Jisung says, sounding wretched. His hands are worked into the fabric of his own pants, like he needs to stop himself from reaching out and touching. “It’s – you shouldn’t. You’re not – I’m sorry.”

“It’s fine, hyung,” Jeongin says, not really meaning it. “I… I’m not going to touch you if you don’t want me to.”

If anything, Jisung looks more troubled. “I do, I do want you to, just – they said, um. Well, that it wouldn’t count as long as –”

The stone in his gut turns into a boulder. Jeongin feels, suddenly, nauseous. “What do you mean, it wouldn’t count ?”

“Just that, as long as you – as long as we just –” Jisung fractures off. “God, Jeonginnie, I want you so badly. But we can’t.”

“I don’t understand,” Jeongin says. His knees are kind of starting to hurt. Everything is kind of starting to hurt. “Maybe you should just… go home. Hyung.” The words drag themselves out of him with a sort of vicious ease, dragging claws in their wake, shredding his gut and his throat into ribbons; so much for his fucking voice. He shouldn’t assume. Shouldn’t – guess. But something about the way Hyunjin had gone so red – how Changbin had said something like how could we not want you and then not touched him anyway – the pieces drag each other out of the silt, a little uncertain. It wouldn’t count as long as – They’re not that fucking stupid, surely. They don’t think Jeongin’s that fucking infantile. He watches the way Jisung takes in what he’s said, piece by piece: a flicker of uncertainty, then something horrible and guilty playing across his lips for the barest moment. Then the rapid shuttering of his expression. Guarded. Neutral. The idol skin, the poker face; Jeongin knows it all too well, has seen it in the mirror.

“Okay, Iyennie,” Jisung says, level, soft. “Okay. Hyung will leave you alone.”

“That’s not what I want, ” Jeongin spits before he can think better of it; then swallows around the ribbons of his pride, sitting shredded in his throat. Whatever. “Go on. Pretty sure Chan-hyung’s at your place anyway, if you’re so fucking worried about what he’ll think.” He drags himself back to his feet, feeling a little wobbly. His body still feels so fucking loose, pliant and happy and endorphin-sweet, and it stings. His eyes sting, his chest – like saltwater on his tongue, where the river meets the sea. Two things that weren’t meant to mix. Silt and sand. Jisung looks kind of pathetic, still sitting back on his heels, at Jeongin’s feet. Chan’s coat is still hanging in his eyeline. It’s cold out. Probably Minho-hyung will have to lend him one, if he wants to come home tonight.

If. Always if.

He doesn’t look at Jisung as he stands too, something shameful in the dip of his head and the curl of his shoulders, but Jisung doesn’t say anything either. He hovers at Jeongin’s side for a second, maybe a second too long, like he’s waiting for something that Jeongin doesn’t give, and then he’s leaving. The front door closes behind him softly, like Jisung is deliberately being gentle with it. Jeongin scrubs his hands over his face.

He doesn’t know – what to do about this. About any of it, about all the feelings too big for his body, the parts that hang over his head, drip-dripping down his spine. He thinks he can hear Jisung’s footsteps as he walks down the hall, the grind of the elevator doors opening and closing. All in his head. He knows desire so well that it’s starting to gnaw at him now – it was easier when it had only ever been wanting, not having-and-unhaving, not taking-and-losing. When want was its own word rather than the past tense of have. He stalks into his own apartment alone, because they hadn’t even made it past the entryway, because Jisung had – what? Wanted him so bad he couldn’t wait, or wanted it to be done quicker? It had felt like he wanted him, at least. Jeongin is getting so fucking sick of the word.

Tugging his pants back up. No clean-up, because Jisung had swallowed it all. Door. Kitchen. Want.

He flicks on the kettle and fumbles some of the instant ramen out of the kitchen cupboard, where it’s been sitting untouched because he’s been doing well, has been working hard and eating better, has swallowed Chan’s stupid protein shakes without complaint and complained about the nutritious and filling meals Chan has taken to making for both of them because it had felt too domestic to go unchallenged. His hands don’t look like they belong to him. Have they ever, really? Not like his throat does. Your voice. Jeongin gazes at the kettle, illuminating the dark kitchen because he hasn’t even bothered to turn the lights on, and feels sort of pathetic, small. Tries not to think about it. He shouldn’t need to.

He’s been sucked off before. He’s fucked and been fucked. But the one-two punch of having and being had by his members, of Hyunjin’s lips and Changbin’s strength and Jisung on his knees by the door – it has him weak, unspooling. He’s not a sappy person, as a rule. He and Beomgyu had worked because they had both known what they’d wanted. The kettle boils, and Jeongin’s hands are shaking a little. Stupid. He shouldn’t even care. He’d gotten his dick wet and hadn’t even had to pay it back – the ideal scenario, probably, except that he’d wanted to see Jisung shaking and unmade. Had wanted to show Jisung he knew how to use his mouth, too. Had wanted to hear how Jisung’s voice changed, whether he got louder or quieter when he was close, whether he was whiny or breathy or hoarse; even spent, warmth unspools in Jeongin’s dick for a moment at the image. Stupid.

He’s sitting in the dark at their kitchen counter, eyes stinging but bitterly dry, poking half-heartedly at his ramen, when the key sounds in the lock.

Chan. He walks in with the same footfall pattern he always does, something Jeongin has become intensely familiar with. Two steps over the threshold, pause in front of the coat rack. Another two steps, and then the floorboards creak when he crouches down to take off his shoes. And then three more, until he pauses at the door to the kitchen.

“Jeonginnie?”

Something tentative and uncertain in his voice, threading through it, insistent. Jeongin waits a second too long to reply to him, and Chan flicks the lights on.

“Why are you just sitting here in the dark?” Chan asks, eyes flicking over Jeongin and his bowl and the table, cataloguing everything.

Jeongin catalogues Chan back; the muss of his hair, the circles under his eyes. The suspicious red mark in the dip of his collar. Not too noticeable, but Jeongin thought Minho knew better. “I’m just sitting here,” Jeongin says listlessly. He twirls his chopsticks around a noodle. It’s cold now, kind of half congealed and sticking together.

He wonders what exactly Chan is seeing when he looks at him. Wonders if he even wants to know. Want, want, want. Chan’s eyebrows scrunch up. His eyes narrow. Jeongin can’t even tell what he’s thinking. “Was Jisungie here?”

Something flares hot and uncomfortable in Jeongin’s stomach. “Why d’you care, hyung?” It’s sort of strange how the spectre of Chan has been hanging over him the past few days, like the threat of him is a separate person to the guy he shares an apartment with. Chan-hyung said. We should talk about this. Chan-hyung would kill both of us. It’s hard to stoke that anger when Chan crosses the room to him, looking tired and pleased and a little concerned. That line had been briefly gone from between his eyebrows. It’s etching itself back into place, now, as he looks at Jeongin. (Even that sits like guilt in Jeongin’s body – he loves to ruin good things, or something.) Jeongin looks back at Chan, then at his sad cold noodles, and says, voice ragged, “ Hyung. ”

Seven ways to say I need you. Seven ways to say I want you. One word making it easy to do it all at once. That horrid swollen feeling presses up against Jeongin’s stinging eyes; he’s not going to cry in front of Chan, he thinks. That’d make it worse. Chan would call him aegi-yah and press a thumb to his cheek and hold him so fucking tightly and Jeongin doesn’t want that, does, doesn’t know. He’s not a child, he’s not, but he almost wants to be held like one. Just for a little.

“Hyung,” he says again, thick and wet.

Chan crosses the room, a little cautious, like he’s approaching a wild animal. But then he gets close enough to Jeongin to ruffle a hand through his hair and say, “what happened, Jeongin-ah?” Like nothing else matters except for Jeongin right now.

The shape of Chan’s desire, or something. Of being needed, needing to be wanted. Jeongin feels like a voyeur, looking at it now, and relishing the way Chan’s palm curves around the back of his head. He doesn’t want to talk about this with Chan, but… He just wants to be wanted, too.

“Hyung,” is all Jeongin says again, leaning further into Chan’s touch despite himself. He still feels… angry, something bubbling under his skin, but beneath that, he just feels sad . Offset. Like they’re all on a slightly different track.

“Did Jisung do something?” Chan asks, quietly, like he doesn’t really want to think about it but can’t not.

Yes. No. Jeongin makes a non-committal noise, shrugging his shoulders. “Doesn’t matter,” he says, thinks the whole story of it must be writ in the way he rasps a little when he speaks. He presses into Chan’s hand again, and Chan makes a small sad noise, folds his arms properly around Jeongin until he’s encircled. (That stab of want again. It’s softer-edged than arousal, but it stings just the same.) Jeongin reaches up to rub his own eyes, feels the damp edge of an old tear sitting under his lashes. He’s not crying now. He hadn’t realised he’d cried at all. Maybe when his whole body still felt alight, when Jisung’s lips were so perfect around him that he probably could have had an aneurysm and not noticed until after he came.

“Jeonginnie,” Chan says, sounding guilty. Jeongin doesn’t have the strength to correct him or to fight it or to – do anything, really, just lets himself be held, feeling a little silly. Chan squeezes him tighter for a moment, then says, “Eat your noodles and let’s go to bed, hey? We’re recording tomorrow.”

“Ugh,” Jeongin complains by rote. He feels like one of a pair of parallel lines – curving into and away from each other, in such perfect synchronicity that they’ll never meet. Just hit the sea separately, so close they could have touched the whole time. He fumbles with his chopsticks and swallows another admittedly unappetising mouthful of ramen. And another, as Chan rubs circles on his back like he would do for a child on the comedown after a tantrum. Jeongin hates it. It soothes him anyway. Chan’s always good at that,

He finishes his food, lets Chan tug him to the bathroom like he’s made of glass. As part of him winds tighter, another part unspools; he knows how to be maknae, how to let Chan take care of him. He knows this game and its rules. “Sleep well, Ayennie,” Chan says, disgustingly fond, and Jeongin pretends to be too tired to push him away when he ruffles Jeongin’s hair again, pretends to be sleepy enough not to know what he’s doing as he leans into the warm planes of Chan’s body, the steady bulwark of him. Familiar. Easy. Jeongin slouches, and it puts him at eye level with Minho’s hickey.

He wants to dig a finger into it and see how Chan reacts, whether the bruise would bloom brighter under pressure. Instead, he lets himself be herded into his bed. Pretends to be sleepier than he is, so that Chan presses a kiss to his forehead for a brief bruising moment, only opens his eyes once he hears Chan shut the door behind him.

Always want. Jeongin feels like he’s living in a constant state of almost, and it’s starting to sting. Like the shape of a bruise he isn’t allowed to wear, blooming on his forehead.

ADULTS ONLY 🔞🔞🔞‼️

22:38 [ channie hyung ] jisung what the fuck did you do

22:40 [ sungie ] I THOUGHT IT WAS ALLOWED NOW. YOUS AID IT DOESNT COUNT IF HE DOESNT SUCK YOUR  DICK

22:40 [ sungie ] i exhibited so much self control youre all just fucking mean

22:41 [ seungmeong ] Hmm. 

22:41 [ seungmeong ] I have an idea.

Chapter Text

Jeongin feels, well. Not exactly better in the morning, but a close enough approximation. He’s recording later, but there’s no dance practice this morning, so he allows himself an extra thirty minutes in bed, and then showers for five minutes longer than usual too. Part of him is dreading seeing Chan today, like Chan would ever judge him for what happened last night. He feels like a stranger in his own home.

Maybe Chan would judge him. Jeongin isn’t entirely sure where he stands now. But he can’t exactly put it off forever, especially not when they live together, so he braves going into the kitchen only to find it empty. The coffee machine is still hot, like someone’s only just turned it off, but there’s an empty bowl by the sink, stacked on top of the one he ate ramen out of last night, and Chan’s mug is missing from its place on the shelf, so. 

Jeongin lives here too. He turns the coffee machine on again. He lives here. Maybe Chan already went to the company. They’ll see each other later, anyway. He’s recording with Felix today. Something uncharitable and half-formed blossoms in the back of Jeongin’s throat along the lines of they’ll be all over each other, Chan and Felix, but he swallows it back down.

He microwaves milk, because he’s too lazy to figure out how to use the steam wand – Chan knows his way around it, only ever bothers when he’s making coffee for other people and wants to do something nice, but the sound kind of freaks Jeongin out early in the morning – and fumbles for his phone while he’s waiting for it. A text from Chan, which sits in the back of Jeongin’s throat with all the stinging things he doesn’t say, asking-without-asking whether he’s feeling better. Jeongin replies with a heart emoji and nothing else. Notifications from his calendar, from his diet app. All familiar.

Unexpectedly, a text from Seungmin: You’re recording with Channie hyung today, yes?

Jeongin blinks at it, feeling a little off-kilter. He replies, yes, and leaves it at that. If Seungmin wants to tell him why, he’ll tell him. The microwave beeps and he leaves his phone open on their text thread. He burns his fingertips picking up the mug, deposits it on the counter hastily enough that milk spills over the side. Ah, fuck. The heat dissipates quicker than he even feels the pain for, but something in it still feels sharp and barbed. Warm, in ways he can’t really have.

It’s fucking coffee. Jeongin imagines himself in his mind’s eye, taking hold of his shoulders and shaking them hard. He’s fine. It’s fine. He drinks it, even if it’s still too hot, hoping it’ll clear some of the fuzz from around his eyes. 

Another text from Seungmin, and then a second not long after. Hmm, okay, and Want some company?

Jeongin catches himself narrowing his eyes, then has to laugh at himself. Everything feels six inches to the left, like the prank Felix had shown him on TikTok one time, to the point that he’s reading into perfectly normal messages; still, he replies, Don’t you have real work to do, hyung? and leaves it at that.

The apartment feels painfully empty. Jeongin’s recording with Chan; they could’ve at least gotten the car to the company together. Instead, Jeongin fumbles off a text to his manager and goes to get dressed, trying not to catch his own eye in the bathroom mirror as he brushes his teeth. He doesn’t think he’d be the radiant stranger from the practice room. Not like this, hollowed-out and caffeinated, feeling jittery in a way that he never is. Like he’d absorbed some of Jisung’s fidgety energy when – well.

Jeongin had intended to not think about it. Then he finds himself hovering in the entryway, toeing on his shoes, swallowing as he glances at the empty coat hook. The exchange of – something. A give and take. He ties his laces a little too tightly and leaves. There’s a car already downstairs, his manager already sat in the driver’s seat.

He’s not late, but it feels a little like it. A couple steps behind the rest of the world. The drive to the company is quiet. Jeongin hums good morning and mutters a thank you and it doesn’t get pushed. He closes the car door a little too hard when he gets out, but nothing is said about that either. That stings, in that old homesick way: eomma would scold him. His halmeoni would blink her old, creased eyes at him and say nothing, and that would be its own reprimand. Here, in Seoul, full of lights, Jeongin slams the door and holds his head high and sets his jaw, because it’s all he can do. The company building always seems to loom a bit, no matter how Jeongin knows its halls almost as well as the streets of his hometown.

“Jeonginnie!” Felix chirps when Jeongin shuffles his way into the studio, and then he’s hurtling Jeongin’s way and Jeongin only sidesteps the hug-turned-tackle by way of practice, letting Felix stumble his way into the wall instead and then pout about it. From further into the room comes Chan’s chuckle. Jeongin shoves his hands in his pockets almost on reflex, feeling mulish, teenaged.

“Hyung,” he mumbles, a neat all-encompassing greeting. Chan looks up from the desk. Felix reroutes to back-hug Jeongin instead, looping his arms over Jeongin’s shoulders. Their height difference isn’t that much, but it feels like it like this, Felix straining up on his tiptoes. 

“Jeongin-ah,” Chan says, softly. Like there are a lot of things he wants to say instead. “How are… you?”

Jeongin scrunches his nose up. “Fine. What time did you leave this morning?”

“Ahh…” Chan grimaces. It looks, almost, like he would rather be anywhere else. Felix is still hanging off of Jeongin’s shoulders, and Jeongin can feel him looking back and forth between them like he’s watching a tennis match. 

Jeongin is used to being a spectacle. It’s his job. Still – he braces against the swell of frustration, then settles into the pressure of Felix’s body pressed against his own, hears Felix make a content little rumble in response. It helps that Chan’s face does approximately eight different things within one and a half seconds after he notices, most of them entertainingly overwrought.

“Um,” Chan says. He’s red again. Good, Jeongin thinks, a little mean still, no matter how fucking gentle Chan had been with him last night; he feels somewhere between serrated and sanded-down, in the process of learning where the broken bits are. “Not, uh. I only just got here like twenty minutes ago, Iyen-ah.”

“Oh, yeah. Huh,” Felix says, amicable and a little bewildered, into Jeongin’s ear. “You didn’t wait, Channie-hyung? I forget you two live together now.”

“Iyennie was sleeping,” Chan says.

Jeongin swallows hard. He was sleeping, because Chan put him to bed, and tucked him in, turned all the lights off. He blinks hard, too. “You should have woken me up,” he says, trying not to sound too bitter about it. Something sour bites in the back of his throat, anyway, and Chan and Felix both seem to notice.

“Well, that doesn’t matter now,” Felix says, easily. “Come on. We should get started, right? Chan-hyung, you have a busy day today?”

Another reminder that there are things Jeongin doesn’t know. Then he feels bad for feeling bad about it, because Chan always has busy days. And he doesn’t need to know about it all the time. It’s just… he feels… on the outside. The edge. Waiting for someone else to pull him over the line, up the riverbank. Into the flood? Out of it? He doesn’t know.

Felix’s hair tickles Jeongin’s ear as he shifts. Then: a barely-there brush of lips against Jeongin’s neck, before Felix is pulling away and crossing the studio towards the recording booth. Jeongin holds very still. Water thunders in his ears. No one is looking at him – Chan’s eyes always flicker to Felix in motion. Seungmin had pointed it out to Jeongin once, low-voiced and conspiratorial: Watch. Now Chan-hyung’s going to stare at him. He thinks that he can get away with it when Felix is going somewhere. Jeongin lifts his hand to his own neck, feels the hint of something damp that might be the imprint of Felix’s lips, might just as easily be Jeongin’s own sweat. He blinks once. Twice. 

Into the flood? Out of it?

Through the glass of the recording booth, Felix meets Jeongin’s eye for a moment, dark and almost heated; then he waggles his eyebrows in that horrendous joking way he has, and laughter spreads its wings over his face, and Jeongin looks away, scowling because it’s the expression that reveals the least. He thinks he might be blushing. Felix’s weaponised sex eyes are no fucking joke, even when they only linger for half a second before Felix can’t take himself seriously any more; beside that, beyond that, Jeongin just feels pleased. It’s a simple glowing thing. Sits easy in his chest.

“Alright, Felix,” Chan says. It’s fascinating to watch, how easily Chan switches in and out of work mode like this. He leans over the desk, one hand twisting a pencil in the air, his eyes flicking between the sheets of music in front of him and Felix in the booth. “You’re ready?”

“Ready,” Felix says, in his stupid gremlin voice. Then he clears his throat and stands up a little straighter, shoulders back, careful motions of breathing, expanding his lungs all the way. Chan nods at him, and presses play on the track and Jeongin loses himself in watching Felix record his parts. 

He always likes watching them work together; any of them, really, the way they all move around each other naturally. The way Felix weaves his way through their lyrics, and Chan guides him. Their competency is… attractive. It makes some dark part of Jeongin feel a little, well. Jealous, maybe. In a way he tries so hard not to feel. But then Felix shoots Jeongin a silly little grin between takes, and even Chan’s eyes flicker over to where he’s settled on the couch every so often, not even a silent question because he doesn’t have to ask. Can just look, and see Jeongin there, and know whatever he needs to know. 

Jeongin fucks around on his phone while he waits; he should be watching, he knows, paying attention, learning, but he really is tired, in a strained sort of way turned thin and reedy by the caffeine. Seungmin hasn’t texted him back yet, but that’s not unusual. Jeongin forwards him a TikTok, then closes the chat. Swallows. He could text Changbin or Hyunjin, maybe. Ask – he doesn’t know. What he’d done wrong? What he’d done so right that it had frightened them? He chews on his lip, half-zoned out, then blinks as Felix looms over him on the couch.

“Up you get,” Felix says, so fond it almost gives Jeongin an ulcer on the spot. “Channie-hyung says I’m done.”

Jeongin feels strangely pinned, despite his words. “Okay,” he says, sounding alarmingly hoarse. Then, before he can lose his nerve, he reaches an arm up to lace it around Felix’s shoulders, settling his hand on the back of Felix’s neck. Like Beomgyu used to before he drew Jeongin down into a kiss. Like he’d done to Eunmi, the stylist noona, who’d liked it, and then his choreographer hyung who’d mostly acted bemused. He doesn’t put any weight into it, doesn’t drag Felix down into Jeongin’s body; just lets his hand rest there for a moment, like the suggestion of pressure.

Felix shivers. He grins, too, slick and oil-spill-pretty, spreading across his face. Jeongin can feel Chan watching them. Can feel Chan watching both of them. Felix doesn’t try to do anything; doesn’t try to lean closer, or kiss him, or press his lips to Jeongin’s cheek like Jeongin half expects, but he does settle down into the weight of Jeongin’s arm and press into his side.

“Come on, Jeonginnie,” Chan says, carefully. So many things going unsaid. “Do you need to warm up?”

Hm, probably. Jeongin nods. Chan doesn’t need to guide them in warm ups anymore, but he does it anyway, and Felix copies him too. It settles something in Jeongin, too, anyway, something innate and bone deep, searching and desperate. He is not immune to overt shows of camaraderie, or whatever. (He is not immune to beautiful men wanting him. He is not immune to wanting them, too.)

In all the ways that matter, singing is easy. Jeongin knows what to do, even if he can’t quite do it; he knows how to work through it when he’s struggling, knows the path to take, like the river that knows the salt taste of the sea. He knows how to take instructions from Chan. He knows how to steady himself when his voice wavers, knows where to find the notes in his throat. He studied the guide when Chan emailed it out to all of them last week, and he’s already practiced swallowing down the guilt that still lingers when he thinks about replacing Seungmin’s steady voice with his own, and he – he knows this. It’s familiar. It’s his job. Here, in a city of nine million, surrounded by lights, Jeongin at least knows how to do this.

Felix blows kisses at him through the glass of the booth; doesn’t balk when Chan catches him doing it, only offers Chan an air-kiss of his own and then returns to making silly faces at Jeongin. He doesn’t know what to do with that. Doesn’t know whether Felix means it. But that oil-slick grin sits pretty on Felix’s face, sinuous, iridescent, and Jeongin misses a note, takes it again, does better the next time. And then Felix is grinning at him, mouthing fighting and jiayou and silly encouragement in eight different languages. And then it’s easy.

In all the ways that matter.

Chan metes out praise like usual, like it means nothing less than it usually does for him, even if it stokes a fire beneath Jeongin’s heart. Something boiling over, heat rising. Felix does, too, cheering at the end of Jeongin’s parts like it’s a concert until it makes Jeongin laugh, flustered. It’s a joke, probably, even though Felix’s eyes are painfully earnest. 

So, like this at least, everything falls into place. Chan ushers him out of the booth and Felix back into it, to polish off a few more adlibs. Jeongin checks his phone. A notification from Seungmin.

Recording is real work, maknae-yah.

Let’s get lunch together instead.

Jeongin looks up at Chan and Felix. Chan is making stupid eyes at Felix through the glass of the recording booth, like no one can see him doing it. Jeongin sighs. He checks the time and taps out a reply to Seungmin: Sure. Now?

Seungmin’s reply comes through quickly. That desperate to get away from recording?

Jeongin looks up again. With Chan and Felix? I’ll meet you downstairs.

“So what’s with the rollercoaster?” Seungmin asks, ten minutes later, eyes deceptively sharp from behind his bibimbap. The freedom to eat rice is rare enough; Jeongin had barely even pretended to protest when Seungmin had suggested the restaurant a few blocks from the company building, no matter that he was technically still on company time. Seungmin looks pretty, because he always does. Sitting on the knife’s edge between poised and artfully messy, with that sort of deliberate precision written in his posture. Made up, but only subtly. Enough that his skin is still the honey-gold tone it has in the dorms, rather than the moon-pale shade it takes on for the stage.

Jeongin blinks at him. “Rollercoaster, hyung?” 

“You walk into practice looking all glowy and joyful and then you show up for lunch like someone shot your dog in front of you,” Seungmin says. He shoves a piece of fried chicken in his mouth. Between the bulging cheeks and the raised eyebrow, it’s very difficult to take him seriously.

Still, he’s always been irritatingly observant. Jeongin swallows. “I thought you guys all talked to each other about this shit anyway,” he says, a little acerbic because Seungmin never minds, never lets the bite in Jeongin’s tone sink deeper than his skin. He pokes halfheartedly at one of his beef slices. Seungmin’s eyes track the motion as he chews, unbothered, and something unspools in Jeongin’s throat; he’s been watching his fucking tone all morning, all day yesterday, trying not to snap because Chan will think he’s breakable and Jisung will think Jeongin hates him and and and and, because they know each other too well for their own good and shoulder each other’s reactions more than their own. Seungmin doesn’t care if Jeongin says something cruel or bitchy or petulant. Seungmin, standing on the other side of the six-month-wide mouth of the river, is not going to treat Jeongin like he’s a child. So Jeongin fixes his eyes on his chopsticks, and mumbles, frustrated, “In your fucking group chat.”

Seungmin doesn’t even look remotely surprised. Jeongin isn’t sure why he thought he would be, but he’s so nonplussed Jeongin almost feels insulted by it. He just hums, and takes an obnoxiously loud slurp of water through his straw, and watches Jeongin for so long, Jeongin starts to feel a little uncomfortable.

When Jeongin is about to demand what, Seungmin speaks. “That’s what this is about? The group chat?”

Well – sort of. No. A little bit. About more, and less. Jeongin flounders. “Not really,” he says.

“You’re just making your way through the band for, what?” Seungmin’s tone isn’t sharp, or accusatory, but his words sting a little anyway. The real answer is something Jeongin doesn’t even want to put words to right now, so he just shrugs. Seungmin tilts his head. “To prove a point?”

“Can I not just want things,” Jeongin says, more standoffish than he intends. Seungmin doesn’t rise to it, though. Just looks at him levelly. Jeongin pokes at a clump of rice and waits for the silence to break, but it doesn’t – only draws out longer and longer, like the string of spit between two mouths as they draw apart, in the infinite moment where all it does is stretch. 

Just as Jeongin lifts some of the rice to his mouth, Seungmin says, head still cocked sideways, “I thought you would’ve gone to Felix by now.”

Jeongin chokes. Seungmin laughs, then pats him on the back, too gently to actually be effective as first aid but too rough to be passed off as comforting. Just right to get on Jeongin’s nerves. (And get him out of his head. Not that he’d fucking admit it.) 

“Why Felix?” he manages to ask. Not that he hasn’t thought about it, but…

Seungmin hums. “You’ve kissed him a lot.”

A couple times, sure. Jeongin grimaces. “Just because I’ve kissed him, I have to have sex with him?”

Seungmin laughs at him. “No, don’t be stupid. Just, you know. If you wanted to. I have it on good authority he’d be down.”

“Why are you telling me this?”

“Isn’t this what you wanted?” Seungmin says, far too innocently to be comforting. “This is how we all talk about it together. None of them would do anything if I didn’t encourage them.” He digs in his pocket for his phone for a moment and sets it on the table beside him, unlocked, like saying, Exhibit A. Glances at it while he steals another sliver of beef from Jeongin’s bowl.

“Meddle, you mean,” Jeongin says. He takes another bite, chews with purpose. Seungmin laughs, but doesn’t dispute it; only watches Jeongin with a sort of diffuse, deceptive focus. It’s unnerving. Jeongin likes to duck his head, work his way under the radar where he can; for Seungmin to look at him and just keep looking seeds something antsy under his skin, sets him a little on edge. Not quite unpleasant. Just – an awareness of being watched.

Seungmin snorts at something on his phone. Says, “You wanna see?” He flashes the screen at Jeongin for a moment, the notifications in his tray. Snippets of a life out of context.

Yesterday 23:27 [ lixie🐣 ] Okay so morally and ethically what the fuck. However. 20 dollars is 20 dollars

Yesterday 23:27 [ Hyunjinnie ] Yes i love dollars 🇦🇺🇦🇺🇦🇺

Jeongin swallows around his rice and says, abruptly, “Did they – when did you –?” He doesn’t know what he’s asking. And then he does. “Were you always part of it?”

“Pretty much,” Seungmin says. He doesn’t sugarcoat it. When he tilts his head again, the afternoon sunlight picks out the lighter-brown flecks in his irises, casts half of his face into clean-edged shadow with a sort of dramatic precision. Seungmin shrugs, then says, “I was probably to blame for half of it. I think that’s why.”

“I wasn’t – underage,” Jeongin says. He thinks. He doesn’t know what he’d do if he was wrong, if it had all been happening for longer than he’d even known about. “When you all started –” The words for it aren’t safe in public, but more than that, he doesn’t know what he’d even say. Fucking is too vulgar, too simple. It’s more than that. Jeongin knows what it’s like to want to fuck a man, and he knows what it’s like to want someone, wholly and desperately, with a sort of monsoon yearning that lingers like humidity in the air until the moment the flash flood bowls him over. Dating would be such a ridiculous understatement it makes Jeongin want to laugh. Partners would be an overstatement in a world where none of them are allowed to be doing any of this.

Together, maybe. In all the messy undernegotiated glory of whatever they do when Jeongin isn’t there. Just vague enough a word, together, that it might almost be enough to encompass it.

Seungmin’s lips thin for a moment. “No,” he says. “You weren’t, I’m pretty sure. Except for a couple – isolated incidents.”

“Right.” Jeongin fumbles with his chopsticks. He’s pretty sure he can guess who some of those might have been.

Seungmin swallows. “I didn’t realise you minded,” he says, and Jeongin glances up at him again, sees the misgiving in the way Seungmin’s face is carefully blank, just the pretty planes of it like a cliffside. He knows how to read Seungmin. He wears it viciously when he’s annoyed; guilt, though, or misgiving, or anything subtler that Seungmin hasn’t quite sorted through yet, all sit on him as blankness. Seungmin says, carefully, “I’m – you seem upset, Jeongin. I didn’t realise.”

He’s not – well. He is. It’s hard to put his finger on; he’s spent so long not letting himself. Jeongin shrugs. “A little. I just… I guess I just want to know why.”

“Why?”

“Why not… me.”

Seungmin doesn’t meet his eyes. He scrapes his chopsticks against the rim of his own bowl, looking for something to do with his hands. “You want the truth?”

Jeongin wonders what the fuck that is supposed to mean. “Well, I don’t want you to lie to me.”

“Felix and I used to talk about it,” is what Seungmin says. “Sometimes Jisung, too. About you. It was like… there was a lot we weren’t saying. And there was a lot the others weren’t saying, either. You know what Chan-hyung is like. He kind of… I thought, maybe… You would come to us. When you wanted to. I pushed too hard with the others, a little bit, and none of us wanted to push too hard with you.”

“You were trying to protect me,” Jeongin says neutrally. Jisung had said the same thing. “And if I… don’t want protecting anymore?”

Seungmin’s smile morphs into something a little more lecherous, teeth and lips and pink tongue, looking at Jeongin like he could just about eat him. Appetite whet. Something thunders through Jeongin, sparking between them, gaping wide. It’s hard to look away from Seungmin, the breadth of his grin, the dark of his eyes; still, Jeongin breaks first anyway.

A little half-laugh, more breath than anything else, goes through Seungmin. Jeongin hears the click of his chopsticks again, sees him moving in his periphery. “Then I’d talk to Chan-hyung,” Seungmin says, still with that broad smug smile, radiating a sort of precise satisfaction. Like somehow Jeongin has walked exactly into what Seungmin wants from him. A beat later, with a little less relish: “Or Felix, I guess, but I don’t know if you’ll get anywhere with that.”

Jeongin blinks. “What is that supposed to mean?”

“Oh, you know.” Seungmin reaches over and steals a slice of beef from Jeongin’s bowl, still grinning. “We all want different things. Some more than others.”

Jeongin hesitates for a moment, sort of looking at his bulgogi and sort of looking at Seungmin’s long, knobbly fingers on his chopsticks and sort of looking at nothing in particular. Something sparky and uncertain is running up and down his spine, electrifying in its newness. “Seungmin-hyung,” he says. He reaches for Seungmin’s hand across the table before he can think better of it, hooking their pinkies together. A beat later: “But some of you want me. Whether or not you’re – letting yourself.”

“Some?” Seungmin says, and laughs out loud. “Jeongin. Maknae-yah. Stupid isn’t a good look on you.”

He goes back to the company after that, after making Seungmin pay for lunch. Figures that’s the least he can do. They part ways at the doors; Seungmin to go back to his and Felix’s apartment, but there’s something restless under Jeongin’s skin. He might as well put it to use. One of the practice rooms is probably free.

He doesn’t see anyone else as he walks through the building. He walks past some of the offices, the small vocal practice rooms, and hears familiar voices, all caught up in their own schedules. The practice room they usually use is empty when he gets there, so Jeongin lets himself in and figures he can stay here until someone tells him to leave. He doesn’t need to work on any of their routines, but it’s good habit to keep practicing them. So Minho says, at least. And Jeongin can’t deny that he enjoys it, anyway. That he can lose himself in them. 

It satisfies something bone-deep in him to watch himself improve – even without someone hovering over his shoulder, offering feedback, Jeongin knows how to watch himself in the mirror with a critical eye. He moves without music through a couple of the choreos he struggles more with, the shapes his body makes. Faster through the easier bits, in the way that Minho sniffs at because he says it sows bad habits, and then slower, step by cautious step, through the parts he knows need work. Lengthening his stride here. The precise angle of his arm there. He catches his own eye in the mirror for a second, barefaced and a little sweaty, and pretends to smolder at his reflection – jaw going a little slacker, eyes boring into themselves in the mirror – before he can’t take himself seriously and folds into a sort of bashful laugh, embarrassed even alone in the practice room. 

He pauses, shoving the spray of his bangs out of his eyes. They’re embarrassingly damp. His legs are a little wobbly when he stumbles over to the water cooler; it’s been longer than he realised, maybe. With just the silence and the mirror and his body. Uncomplicated.

It’s kind of nice. To not worry about the way anyone’s looking at him. 

He fumbles for his phone absently, with half a mind to connect to the speakers and actually dance to music rather than looking like an idiot in silence, only to squint at the time when he spots it. It’s been hours since he said goodbye to Seungmin. There’s a pile of notifications from the band chat, one from Seungmin himself, and two from Felix. Jeongin doesn’t get a chance to look at any of them properly before his phone starts ringing.

The facetime call he answers reveals a very close up image of Felix, nose practically pressed to his phone screen. Jeongin can see all his freckles and a very minimal amount of pores. The second Jeongin’s end connects and his own camera loads, though, Felix pulls back with an urgency Jeongin wants to make fun of him for.

“What the hell have you been doing?” Felix demands, “no one’s seen you for hours, why are you all wet?”

He’s not. Jeongin looks carefully at himself in his camera thumbnail. He looks fine. Maybe a little flushed. His bangs are a little damp with sweat. “Um, practicing. Why, do you need me to come back?”

“I always need you, Ayen-ah,” Felix says, teasing, in a very close approximation to Jisung’s voice. “Nah. We’re having movie night. You should come.”

“Now?” Jeongin glances at the time again. “Let me go home and shower first.”

Something seems to stutter in Felix’s demeanor. His cheeks grow red, and he stops looking directly at the camera. “Ahh. You don’t have to do all that. Just come over here! Hurry!”

And hangs up. Jeongin stares at the screen for a second. He blinks, and then blinks again. Thinks about what Seungmin said, everything Seungmin said. And Chan and Felix in the recording studio this morning. This tangled thread of desire, eroding away between them all. Lakes of it, welling up in the cavern of his body. He shoves his bangs out of his face again. He thinks about calling for a company car, maybe seeing if anyone else is still in the building to drive home with him. But… probably not. His T-money card is still tucked in his wallet. Maybe he’ll just take the subway.

There’s a stash of baseball caps and deodorant sticks and fruit gummy snacks tucked away next to the water cooler, courtesy of Chan, after they’d had one too many close calls getting home, or practicing too hard, too late at night. Jeongin makes gratuitous use of it now, before packing up his phone and hoodie and jamming one of the caps over his hair. No one stops him in the hallway; no one stops him at the entrance to the building as he steps out onto the street. The city smells like exhaust and like smoke and, beneath it all, like evening, the cool fresh newness of something ending, of the night blossoming into a different shape than the day. Jeongin swallows. It’s only six or so, but it feels – earlier. Later. Both. Neither.

No one stops him on the street. He keeps his head down and ducks into the subway station and taps his card like he’s nobody, like he could have anything he wanted, like none of it matters. He knows this station inside out, used to come through here every weekend on the way to the company building. It’s only two stops now. If Jeongin were going home, he’d ride another four, then change lines, then –

This time, when he breathes in deep, he can only smell the cotton and sweat of his mask. And the pungent deodorant from the practice room which he thinks is the brand Jisung buys; Minho would know. Jeongin hasn’t gone grocery shopping with Jisung in embarrassingly long. Hasn’t lived with him in longer. He sways with the subway and lets himself melt into the crush of bodies, thinks, It doesn’t matter like this. It doesn’t need to matter.

Two stops. Time parting around him like the river around a stone. Jeongin rubs at his eyes; no one stops him. He’s not doing anything wrong. He’s allowed this. Allowed to want this. Movie night, Felix had said. Maybe he’s reading into it, anyway. But Felix’s oil-spill smile sits slick and pretty on the surface of his mind, the iridescence tossed by white water but lingering regardless: Felix in the recording studio, waggling his eyebrows. Felix in the practice room, his hands lingering.

Felix two days ago, breaking the dam. Wanting him. 

Some? Seungmin had said, then laughed.

Wanting.

The train doors slide open. Jeongin disembarks. He makes his way through the station easily: that’s familiar, at least, a route they’ve all taken before. Not often, because there had been a lot of fuss about security, and safety, and the kinds of things that Jeongin tries not to think about. The parts that make it all feel – real . He tugs the cap a little lower over his eyes. It’s dark enough now that he’s sure he can just blend into the sway of the crowd, anyway, but something shivers up and down his spine anyway. Something about potential. Things that could be.

Felix and Seungmin don’t live too far from the station, at least. It’s not a long walk, and their neighbourhood is nice, so Jeongin takes his time. He still feels a little twitchy, burrowed under his skin. Like he should have gone home and showered, washed something off, washed away. But Felix is a hard person to say no to.

Their building looms, barely a block away. It’s not the tallest building in the vicinity, but it’s still pretty high. They’re on the fifth floor, something Jisung and Hyunjin had complained about, how it wasn’t high enough to justify using the elevator, but too high to take the stairs the whole way . Jeongin presses the intercom buzzer, looking up. He can see the window for their kitchen, with a row of fake plants on the windowsill, blurred by the glass. Seungmin answers.

“ The doors are unlocked. Just come straight up, ” he says, voice crackling through the speaker before cutting off with a sharp click before Jeongin can reply. He pushes open the door to the lobby. They were expecting him, after all.

He takes the elevator. Hyunjin isn’t here to judge him, and something is jittering under his skin. Five floors, but the floodwater keeps rising, Jeongin thinks nonsensically; a hunched ahjumma shuffles into the elevator on the third floor and then glances at him disapprovingly when she realises it’s going up rather than down, and Jeongin fumbles to press the ground floor button for her as it creaks back into motion. Watches the way the smile creases her face. He flushes, then, tugging his mask and cap off, feeling adrift in the stirred silt of the evening; she glances at him again as he gets off the elevator, and her smile feels like gold flecks settling to the bottom. Back where they came from. Undisturbed, but hidden again in the muck, not yet uncovered by the carnage of the flood.

An old lady smiled at me in the elevator, Jeongin tells himself. Get a fucking grip.  

He knocks on the apartment door, moving by rote, not quite knowing why he feels like bracing himself. He’s been here before. Seungmin and Felix are two of his best friends. It feels like he’s meeting them again for the first time.

Felix answers the door. He takes one look at Jeongin and falters a little, like he really is surprised to see him. “You came straight here.”

Jeongin blinks. His hair is stringy with grease and sweat, and his t-shirt is sticking to the small of his back. Why the hell does he listen to Felix. “Um. Yeah.”

“Looks like you were practicing pretty hard,” Felix says, and then laughs awkwardly. He’s not meeting Jeongin’s eyes.

“Felix! Shut the door!” Seungmin yells. Felix ushers him in, into their apartment properly, familiar in essence but something entirely foreign hanging in the air. Jeongin toes off his shoes, hesitates, then follows Felix into the kitchen, feeling a little like a duckling trailing a swan. Only once he’s braced against the kitchen island does Felix turn and actually look Jeongin up and down, gaze sort of – lingering. 

Who are you seeing, Jeongin wants to ask and doesn’t. What do I look like through your eyes?

Instead, he looks back at Felix for a moment, trying to square his shoulders, to wear his body with the sort of effortless grace Felix seems to. “Felix-hyung,” he says. Just that. And watches the way Felix watches him back, with a sort of curious detachment, like he’s one level removed from the conversation after all. (Like how Seungmin would point it out to Jeongin: Watch. Now they’re going to stare at each other.)  

He wonders if Felix is looking at him the way he looks at Chan. If maybe Jeongin is looking at Felix that way, too. There’s a fuzz of noise coming from their living room, from the TV, as Seungmin scrolls through some streaming service but Jeongin can’t quite focus on any of the words. Felix is looking at him. Felix. Looking at him.

“Jeonginnie,” Felix says, a multitude contained within one word. “Come on. You’ve been busy the last few days.”

Has he? Maybe. He’d known they were all going to talk about it. It . He’d wanted them to talk about it. “A little. I guess.”

Felix raises an unimpressed brow, leans forward to take one of Jeongin’s hands into his own, then snickers when Jeongin doesn’t pull away. Laughter and concern and a grin like he’s shit-stirring chase each other across his face. Each lingering for just a moment. “You okay?” Felix says, like it’s simple, like he doesn’t need Jeongin to answer yes. And Jeongin can see damn well that he wants to start running his mouth, knows him well enough for that; still, Felix holds his tongue, the closest he ever gets to patient. His thumb draws a broad arc over Jeongin’s palm. 

He’s not quite barefaced – Jeongin can see the smoothness of foundation across his cheekbones, and the half-moon circles under his eyes are hidden – but he seems somehow unspooled regardless, here in his apartment, wearing a threadbare long-sleeved jumper that might as well be a pyjama shirt and loose sweatpants Jeongin is pretty sure belonged to Chan at one point, since he’s seen them in his own bathroom. There’s nothing performative in the way his eyes track Jeongin’s. Patient, Jeongin thinks again, warmth swelling in his chest.

He shrugs. “I talked to Seungmin-hyung. That helped, I think.”

Felix’s smile is half-hearted, but Jeongin’s gaze snags on his lips anyway and hovers there as he speaks, still tinted a little pinker than their natural colour by whatever he’d worn out to the company. It’s kind of staggering to think that Jeongin has kissed him. Multiple times. “Not what I asked, Jeongin-ah,” Felix points out, but there’s no heat to it; he tugs reproachfully at Jeongin’s hand in his own, like making a point, but Jeongin sways into the movement far more than he needs to. Lets himself be pulled. And then he’s very close to Felix, almost flush against his body, in the bright kitchen that feels simultaneously half-real, dreamlike, and like the truest fucking thing Jeongin’s ever felt. He hears Seungmin laugh from the living room at something in a trailer. Felix’s hand settles on Jeongin’s waist.

“I like kissing you, hyung,” Jeongin says. “We should do it more.”

That’s easy, at least. Felix’s face warms into a smile, something a little smug and playful. His fingers dig into Jeongin’s flesh, the soft bit on his hipbone. “You think so? Even when the others aren’t here to see?”

Jeongin nods. Yes. “I like it,” he says again, and then, “hyung.” And watches Felix reel. 

Felix doesn’t make him ask. Maybe the others would have. Felix doesn’t; they’re already close. There isn’t far to lean in, for either of them, and Jeongin meets him halfway. It is different like this, knowing no one else is here to watch them. No one, really, to show off for. Seungmin’s in the other room, but he isn’t paying much attention. Felix kisses him gently, like he isn’t trying to perform for anyone, either. His lips are soft, and his hands firm on Jeongin’s body. No rush about it.

The rush of it sits so easily in Jeongin’s body, slick and simple in his chest: he knows how to kiss and be kissed, how to drag his hands over Felix’s chest, can recognise the sensation of someone smiling against his mouth. Felix’s hand is a comfortable weight against his hip. Jeongin can feel the warmth of it even through his clothes. He presses closer until their chests are flush for a moment, then draws back for breath, feels nothing more complicated than a warm satisfied glow at the faint puffiness to Felix’s lower lip, at the way Felix’s eyes have softened around the edges in response. Says, hoarse, happy, “Hyung, will you laugh at me if I tell you that was nice?”

“I got the idea,” Felix says. He slides his hand around the jut of Jeongin’s hip to cradle his ass for a moment, and then laughs when Jeongin fixes him with as unimpressed a stare as he can muster. “Sorry.”

“You’re all as bad as each other,” Jeongin says, petulant. “Trying to grope me.” And then the joke slips from his skin like water, and he leans in again, finds Felix’s lips with his own, kisses him with a sweet sort of intent and relishes in the answering glow in his chest. He traces his tongue over the swollen shape of Felix’s lower lip again and thinks about being sixteen and starry-eyed. Well. About being sixteen and starry-eyed and not knowing he was queer, not knowing why his gaze had always snagged and caught on boys’ lips the way it had on girls’. 

If he’d known, then, that he could have this one day – And it doesn’t even matter. Jeongin just hums against Felix’s mouth, warm and self-possessed, and thinks, Maybe that really was me in the mirror.

“Are we going to watch a movie?” Jeongin murmurs, words pressed in the space between them. He didn’t come here under a pretence, really. Not that Felix even needed one; his laugh bubbles against Jeongin’s own mouth, swallowed down between kisses.

“If you want to,” Felix says, an out. “Or… we can do something else.”

“What about Seungmin?”

Jeongin doesn’t particularly care what Seungmin does right now. But it makes Felix grumble under his breath, and lean down and very firmly slam his forehead against Jeongin’s pecs in exasperation. “Seungmin can do whatever he wants. He’s caused enough problems in the last few days,” is Felix’s reply, muffled against Jeongin’s chest. He inhales deeply too, while his nose is smushed there.

Jeongin frowns. He makes a mental note to bother Seungmin about whatever he’s done the last few days. But he asks, “are you smelling me?”

Felix makes a noise that’s neither here nor there. “Did you really come here to watch a movie, Ayennie?”

The answer to that is easy, too. “I came here because you asked me,” Jeongin says. Sweaty bangs and all. He presses his cheek against the top of Felix’s head, admits, “If you wanted to watch a movie, I’d be happy with that.”

“But?” Felix says. His grin colours his words iridescent. 

“But,” Jeongin agrees noncommittally, then laughs as Felix makes a frustrated sound into his chest again. “What? You said it first, hyung.”

“You’re worse than Minho-hyungie,” Felix says. “God. You little shit. You know this about yourself, right?”

Jeongin snickers. Drags his hands up the plane of Felix’s lower back, enjoying the way his fingers can splay so far across Felix’s waist on either side that his thumbs almost meet at Felix’s stomach. He knows people like his hands; he is, admittedly, not above cheap tricks. “What, hyung? Did you want me to ask for something else?”

“I want to know what you want,” Felix says. Jeongin feels the way his stomach tenses and then relaxes against his hands. “And then I want to give it to you.”

That is the question, Jeongin thinks. The things he wants. It’s always the question. He leans down to kiss Felix again, gently, and because it’s hard not to. They’re still in the kitchen. There are still dirty plates next to the sink, a half finished cup of water next to a mug with a chip in it. A pile of spilled herbs that haven’t been cleared up yet. Everything lived in. Seungmin, barely a door away. And Felix, staring at him with big, dark eyes, edges all blurry, his smile spilling across his face in the halogen glow, kissing him with that mouth. 

“Can we go to your room?” Jeongin asks. 

“Yeah,” Felix says. Like it’s that simple.

Jeongin spreads his fingers as far as they’ll go, tracing shapes across the smooth skin beneath Felix’s shirt, exploring the sensation of the hair there. Not waxed, for once. A little reprieve from being asked to flash their abs on a near-daily basis. “Can we – can I touch you?”

“Yeah,” Felix says. Oil on water; skin on skin. He leans back to brace himself against the kitchen counter and just looks at Jeongin for a moment; for once, Jeongin doesn’t chafe under the observation. The TV hums in the other room. He can hear both of them breathing; Jeongin feels a little ragged, even just from the kissing.

He says, not quite bitter but searching, “Are you going to stop me from touching you?”

Felix tilts his head. Something flashes across his face, and the moment of hesitation settles into Jeongin’s stomach like a horrid stone, like the dark slick of oil spreading through the river, all the glimmer of it gone – and then Felix says, “Okay, look, Jeongin-ah, I’m going to be so fucking real with you for a second.”

Jeongin isn’t sure what he’s expecting Felix to say, but it isn’t anywhere close to what actually comes out of his mouth. Felix bites down on his lip, doesn’t meet his eyes. Says, “we, um. Well, Seungmin suggested it.”

Right. The problems Seungmin has been causing.

Felix continues, “Seungmin made a bet on who would. You know, fuck you. First.”

Jeongin allows himself a few brief seconds to let himself feel betrayed by Seungmin. “Is that why he was so weird at lunch earlier?”

“Probably,” Felix allows. “And, look. You can’t actually tell the others you know, but I’ll split the winnings with you if you let me win. And you can, like, fuck my thighs or something.”

“Why are you all betting on it in the first place?” Jeongin asks, and then furrows his eyebrows. “Can’t I just fuck your thighs anyway?”

Felix does laugh again at that, which Jeongin wants to be offended by but mostly just finds reassuring, in a weird sort of way. “Yeah,” he says. “I mean, I’d let you anyway. Could not fucking tell you why. I think it’s the competitiveness. Or. Like, Jisungie trying to justify things retroactively.”

The mention of Jisung makes something curdle in Jeongin’s stomach. “Is that why –” he begins, and then swallows it away. “That’s a stupid fucking reason – I mean – ugh. Whatever.” He sounds petulant, he knows, sulky, but it’s hard to stay upset when Felix’s lip is still flushed from kissing, when he has a pretty man pressed against a kitchen counter, when Felix tells him yeah like it’s easy. Like it’s simple. “You and Jisung talk about everything,” Jeongin finds himself saying, which feels like a non-sequitur but drags itself out of his throat before he can really think about what he’s actually implying.

Felix gives him a tired sort of smile. “I think for him it seemed like a good way to not have to actually engage with how he was feeling,” he says. “Or something. I dunno, I’m not his therapist; you wanna fuck?”

Jeongin blinks long and slow at him. “I don’t know, how much is the bet for?”

“Um,” Felix says, and fumbles in his pocket for his phone. “I put thirty thousand won on Jisung. Does it matter?”

He can think about that later. Felix seems impatient now, shoving his phone away and taking Jeongin by the hand. They end up in his bedroom, somehow, in some whirlwind. Jeongin doesn’t quite realise the doors have opened and then closed, both of them fumbling with the lock, until Felix pushes him down onto his bed. In the distance, the something beyond Felix’s room, the TV clicks off and Seungmin’s bedroom door clicks shut as well.

It doesn’t matter right now. Felix kisses him again, bites into Jeongin’s lip meanly and then laves over it with his tongue gently, gets his fingers in Jeongin’s hair, kissing him with a ferocity none of the others have, yet. Like he’s possessed by the force of his desire. It feels tidal, inexorable, the way Felix grins when Jeongin gives a low groan into his mouth, the way Jeongin squirms when Felix’s grip in his hair, still sweaty from the fucking dance practice, tightens enough to send shocky pain through his scalp. White water boils within him. Within them both, Jeongin thinks, and pulls back from Felix’s lips for just a moment, trying to catch his own breath. He’s spreadeagled inelegantly on the bed. Felix’s sheets have little dog emojis printed on them. He’s here. It’s real.

Felix hovers above Jeongin, braced on both elbows, close enough that Jeongin can smell his breath; it should be gross but instead just feels human, perfect, almost sweet. “You good?” Felix says in that low husky voice of his, the rasp of it resonating through both of their bodies. Jeongin shudders, and then blanches when Felix laughs. “What, Innie, you like my voice? How original.”

“Shut the fuck up,” Jeongin says, mortified.

Felix smiles, then reaches down to press a kiss to the tip of Jeongin’s nose, brief and affectionate. A week ago, it might have made him cringe. Two days ago, it might have felt demeaning. Now, here, Jeongin settles and lets himself be touched. “You’re cute,” Felix says, but it doesn’t feel – infantilising, mocking, the way the word cute has seemed to curdle and go sour these past few years. Felix traces his fingers down the length of Jeongin’s arm, says, “Jesus fucking Christ. That shouldn’t be allowed.”

“Sorry,” Jeongin says, emboldened. “My bad.” He reaches up to get his arms around Felix’s waist again, then snorts at the little squeak Felix gives in response. It’s fun, flustering and being flustered, like he’s fifteen and losing his virginity again, or like he’s nineteen in a practice room with someone who had just as much to lose. It’s easy. Jeongin hooks a finger under the hem of Felix’s shirt, feels his smile creasing his own eyes; feels desire rising through his body, potent and frothing but easily sated. “We could have been doing this for years,” he says, and is pleasantly surprised when it doesn’t come out sounding bitter. Only mildly wistful. 

Felix presses his body flush against Jeongin’s from hip to waist, smiling into his shoulder. “My bad,” he echoes. Jeongin snorts. Felix’s lips press against his collarbone, then his shoulder, the plane of his pec through his shirt, with a sort of sweet lack of grace, a deliberate desperate clumsiness, like he wants it bad enough to not quite care about the fact that he’s getting spit all over Jeongin’s clothes. One of his hands settles on Jeongin’s chest; the other finds Jeongin’s own, twines their fingers together, oddly tender. Warmth blooms through Jeongin’s body. Felix is still actively kissing his shirt.

“You know that comes off, right,” Jeongin says, trying to sound suave. He’s not quite sure whether he’s actually accomplished that or if it just comes out sounding dorky; either way, though, Felix makes a little affirmative grunt like good point and draws just far enough back to skim both of his hands up under Jeongin’s shirt, dragging it over his neck. Jeongin lifts his head obligingly, then cackles when Felix manages to tangle him in it for a moment. “Hyung,” he says, muffled by fabric that tastes embarrassingly sweaty.

The shirt is tugged away; Felix looms back into his vision, blonde and brilliant, close enough that his hair tumbles around both of them. Felix’s hands on his skin are cold where Jeongin feels hot, fingers feeling their way across his ribcage and his sternum and running up and down his chest. He keeps his own hands wrapped firm around Felix’s waist, fingers brushing against his skin.

“Mine too?” Felix says, already sitting up enough to pull his t-shirt off too. It gets tossed somewhere, maybe near the door. Jeongin doesn’t pay much attention to that: Felix straddles his hips, knees either side of Jeongin’s hips, stretching his arms over his head and trailing his hands over his body on the way back down. He’s flexing, which makes Jeongin want to laugh a little, but what wins out is reaching out to wrap one hand around Felix’s bicep and pull him closer again. 

He kisses Felix, lips pressed together, breathing each other’s air. Felix’s hands run all over his body, fingers curious and playful over Jeongin’s skin. He can feel Felix’s cock through his pants, pressing into his hip. Fuck, Felix can probably feel his. His knees squeeze around Jeongin’s pelvis, and his fingers pinch over Jeongin’s nipples briefly, and Felix gasps into his mouth when Jeongin’s hips twitch upwards. 

Felix laughs, air puffing over Jeongin’s cheeks. “You like that?”

“Mhm,” Jeongin says, chasing Felix’s mouth. He drags one hand up Felix’s torso to pinch at his nipples too, a little harder. Meaner. Until Felix makes a noise in the back of his throat. “Don’t you?”

“Are you always kind of a brat?” Felix asks, but he’s breathing heavily. Jeongin rolls his nipple between his fingers again, and then he moans, body lax in Jeongin’s hands, and their lips come back together. Felix kisses him hungrily, desperately, messy, like he can’t contain his desire enough. Like it spills out at the edges of him, torn away from him, overflowing. Jeongin hears his heartbeat in his ears like the rushing of water, feels it pulsing in his cock, presses up against the solid weight of Felix’s body and groans into his mouth. The sound spills out the sides, in the gaps between their lips. Felix’s tongue laves over Jeongin’s teeth. Jeongin grazes his thumb over Felix’s nipple again and Felix’s entire body shudders against him, sinuous despite how uncontrolled it is, pleasure rippling through him and into Jeongin through the places where their bodies press together.

Jeongin trembles against him for a moment, feels unmade, untied – like something has opened up and he’s leaking out the edges of his body, losing himself through his own seams. Felix kisses him open-mouthed and messy and sweet. Jeongin tugs at Felix’s nipple again, centres himself through the shape of his own laugh, the way it tastes in his mouth, at Felix’s responding shudder; says, “Were you serious about letting me fuck your thighs?”

“Oh,” Felix says, low and pretty and dangerous, “oh, Jeonginnie. Yes. Yeah, please, fuck.”

Jeongin wants to laugh, but something about Felix’s voice pins the cackle in his throat, keeps it there. “Does it not count for the bet?”

“Do not talk to me about the bet right now,” Felix says, husky. Then: “Also, nah. There’s a whole set of rules on what counts. It’s kinda ridiculous, but, you know, Hyunjinnie and Changbin-hyung came up with them, so.”

There’s something there, maybe. Jeongin wants their attention: something about being given it like this, like they can’t even help themselves, feels… kind of nice. Maybe. As much as he wants for entirety. As much as he hates it.

“Don’t even think about them right now,” Felix says, and then grinds his ass back against Jeongin’s dick. “Come on. Come on. fuck me.”

Yeah, Jeongin can do that. He engages his core, pushing upwards a little more until he can move and get Felix under him, until he can dig his fingers into the flesh at Felix’s waist, the band of his pants, enough to pull them off. 

“You’re not wearing underwear?”

Felix huffs and laughs, cheeks flushing a little. Jeongin can’t stop staring at his dick. “I was being presumptuous. Come on, Jeonginnie.”

“Give me a second, ” Jeongin says. Felix’s cock is flushed and hard and pretty, wetter at the head than Jeongin ever really gets, and he shudders when Jeongin gets his hand around it and thumbs over the head to smear his precome down the shaft. It shouldn’t be so hot for what it is, Jeongin thinks, but then again that could be said about ninety per cent of the things Felix does, and it hasn’t stopped him yet. Jeongin drags a greedy hand up the plane of his stomach, through the smattering of hair over his abdomen, and tugs on Felix’s dick again, once, twice. Desire yawns river-wide through the breadth of Jeongin’s chest. There’s nothing quite like a pretty boy squirming against him, Jeongin thinks, and then cringes a little at himself – but Felix makes a sort of breathy whimper, and abruptly Jeongin can think about very little else but wringing more of those sounds out of him.

“Innie. Innie, ” Felix says, insistent. “You’re not – don’t laugh, okay – fuck. ” His breath judders as Jeongin thumbs over the head of his cock again. “You’re not allowed to make me come or I lose, like, twenty bucks, shit –”

“What the hell kind of a bet is that?” Jeongin says, but he relents, moving his hand to trail over Felix’s stomach again instead. “Is that why –?”

“Don’t think about them,” Felix insists again. He wriggles underneath him, hands grabbing at Jeongin’s hair, around his neck, his shoulders. “And take your clothes off, holy shit.”

He does, pushing away from Felix just long enough to pull everything off and toss it away. Felix’s eyes track every motion he makes, a different kind of performance. His hands, fingers, greedy, tracing paths all over Jeongin’s body, digging bruises into the soft parts of him. 

“I thought we weren’t meant to leave marks,” Jeongin says, and then Felix raises an eyebrow at him.

“Who else are you taking your pants off for, Innie?” and then Felix digs his nails into Jeongin’s hip, sharp against his pelvis. Jeongin lets himself arch into the pressure, knows his own angles; laughs when he catches Felix’s mouth dropping open for a second in his periphery. “Fucking hell, ” Felix says, and he drags his nails over the jut of Jeongin’s hip. “Holy fuck, Jeonginnie. You know how hot you are?”

“Hm,” Jeongin says. He wriggles until he can get his mouth on the soft part of Felix’s tummy for a moment, considers licking a long stripe up his abs just to be contrary, then fits his lips to the skin and sucks hard for a moment. Felix’s breath punches out of him. Jeongin hesitates, though – lingers only long enough for Felix to feel it, not long enough to leave a hickey that’ll really last – then draws back, says “I don’t know, hyung. Remind me?”

“You’re so annoying, ” Felix says. He sounds delighted by it, hooking his legs around Jeongin’s waist and locking his ankles together; the angle drags their cocks together, and Jeongin presses into it, the shine of Felix’s precome pretty in the low light. Felix hums at the pressure, rutting against him. 

“Are you allowed to come at all?” Jeongin asks, watching Felix’s face morph through pleasure. His heartbeat thunders in his ears, his body moving against Felix’s easily.

Felix tips his head back, pausing his movement. “Don’t say that. I… probably. It just can’t be you.”

“So I can watch you?” Jeongin says. He pushes against Felix’s crotch again, purposeful. “Right?”

He moans again, at Jeongin’s movement or his words or – all of it. Jeongin feels kind of light headed himself. Felix trembles beneath him. “Yeah. Yes. Fuck, I don’t even care. Yes.”

“What about your money?”

Felix pokes mean fingers into Jeongin’s waist. “I think you should just fuck me. Now.”

“Thighs?” Jeongin says mildly, rolling his hips into Felix. 

“Fuck. Yeah, Jeonginnie, if I have to wait for you to prep me I think I’m actually going to combust. Just –” Felix makes grabby-hands at him, which is funny for all of two seconds before he’s maneuvering the two of them onto their sides, Jeongin’s chest pressed flush to Felix’s back, and the drag of his cock against Felix’s ass has him holding back a hiss. Felix laughs, high and bright, and grinds back into him for a second. Then he reaches for the nightstand by the bed and groans when it’s just out of reach, shuffles himself awkwardly on his elbows until he can just stretch far enough to fumble lube out of the top drawer – half-empty, Jeongin notes, with a sting of some emotion that might be amusement or jealousy and feels mostly declawed. Curiosity, he thinks. Half-full, more like. 

“Don’t laugh at me,” Felix says. Jeongin can’t see his face, but he can hear the pout. He presses his lips to Felix’s back and shoulders in lieu of an answer, drags his teeth as lightly as he can over the taut brown skin, remembers that people do very much see here on occasion. It’s not quite photoshoot season, but – fear twinges low and familiar in Jeongin’s gut. No marks. Not on the upper half, at the very least. He mouths at the back of Felix’s neck, dragging one hand up the long line of his torso from his hip to his shoulder, and shudders as he hears Felix flick open the lube bottle, feels him jostle both of their bodies as he slicks up the inside of his thighs.

The fear dissipates easily: most of his thoughts do. Felix reaches back to guide Jeongin’s cock between his thighs, one of Jeongin’s hands stretched over his stomach and Felix’s hand curled around it, and then Jeongin’s only concern is pushing his dick into the space between Felix’s thighs. He ruts against Felix mindlessly, running his fingers over Felix’s body as he does. Felix’s thighs are tight and strong, and he flexes the muscle around Jeongin’s cock, pushing his ass back against Jeongin’s groin until they both moan.

“Good?” Felix whispers, holding tight to Jeongin’s hand. He’s breathing heavily, back arched against Jeongin’s chest. 

“Yeah,” Jeongin manages back. Better than he thought, maybe. Felix’s thighs are warm and wet and he keeps them flexed. Jeongin can see his pulse in his neck, can smell his shampoo and the remnants of whatever perfume he wore today. “Yeah, it’s so good. Hyung.” Bodies on bodies. The warm weight of touch. Felix pressed flush against him from shoulder to knee, their legs tangled; Jeongin breathes hard against his shoulder, fucks into the space between his thighs and makes a little punched-out sound at the sensation. Dancers’ legs should, for the record, not be allowed. Just as a matter of principle.

He grinds his hips shallowly into Felix, warm and slick and perfect, thinks, I get this, I have this, I have this. Desire, sated, is nowhere near as thorny. The flood rushes down the river and finds the delta, and the sea is big enough to swallow it whole. I have this. Felix shifts his balance and squeezes around Jeongin’s cock, and the pressure is so sweet, so overwhelming, Jeongin can only bury his forehead into the back of Felix’s neck and breathe heavily for a moment. Recalibrating. Felix murmurs little encouraging things to him, says “Jeonginnie, Jeongin-ah,” says “You’re doing so fucking well, yeah?”, says, “There you are. There you are, love,” and then something wry and dark in English that Jeongin only catches half of but thinks might be particularly profane. Time unspools. Felix’s legs are obscene and perfect, and Jeongin loses himself between them, until the moment the handle of the locked door clicks as someone tries and fails to open it.

Jeongin’s heart kicks up a notch, something that’s - maybe arousal. Felix, at least, tenses and squirms and whines, like he likes it. Jeongin swallows. He thrusts back between Felix’s legs sharply.

“Yah, Felix!” comes Seungmin’s voice, muffled. Perfectly naive, like he has no idea what he’s interrupting. With an undercurrent of something , sharp and deadly. “Don’t take too much longer, let’s order dinner soon!”

Felix inhales sharply, but his voice sounds impressively normal when he replies. “We’ll be quick, Seungminnie –!” and then, quieter, to Jeongin, “fuck, I feel like I could come from this.”

Footsteps, in the back of his mind, walking away. “You’re not supposed to, right?”

Felix’s head tips back against his shoulder as he groans again. “God, you’re the worst. This is the worst. Are you close?”

Rutting against Felix like this, tight, hot, wet, yeah. Yeah, he’s close. Jeongin hums, pressing his lips to Felix’s shoulder. “Mhm. Yeah. Yeah, I am.”

“Good, that’s good –” Felix twists his head, straining as far as he can, and Jeongin moves halfway to meet him, presses their lips together again, open-mouthed and messy. Not like in the living room, where Felix had kissed him in front of all of them – it feels like months ago now – and Jeongin shudders, thinks of the weight of all of their stares, of the sweet undertone to Seungmin’s voice when he’d said don’t take too much longer. He moans into Felix’s mouth, startling himself. Felix shudders, says, “What are you thinking about, baby? Tell me, c’mon –” He flexes his thighs impossibly tighter, and Jeongin shudders, fucking short and shallow between them. 

“Seungmin-hyung,” Jeongin chokes out, “just now. Watching.” He swallows. Want rears its head inside him, a towering wall of water, the looming moment before a wave breaks. “When you kissed me in front of everyone. Thought about them watching – us. This.”

“Fuck,” Felix groans. He presses an open-mouthed kiss to the edge of Jeongin’s jaw. “You want hyungs to watch you fuck me, Iyennie? Want your hyungs to watch you come?”

Jeongin cries out, buries his sounds in the meat of Felix’s shoulder as he comes, as the wave breaks over him, as he fucks into Felix’s legs and thinks about taking him for real, about the way they’d look – the burning in Chan’s eyes in the studio. The sweet edge to Minho’s gaze in the practice room. The blistering desire in Hyunjin’s eyes in the living room, uncomfortable but honest. Jeongin clamps his jaw shut so he doesn’t do something stupid like sink his teeth into Felix’s skin. Pleasure courses down the channels of his body, impossible, almost too much, just enough; here, here, here. Jeongin digs his fingers into Felix’s stomach. He thinks he makes a sound he’ll never admit to – high and needy, almost a whine – as Felix tenses his thighs again and milks an aftershock from his cock, murmurs, “Good. God, Innie, you sound so fucking pretty.”

He’s impatient the second his orgasm peters out, shifting Felix to face him, to kiss him, hands splayed on either side of his face. “Wanna see you, too,” he says, biting the words into Felix’s mouth. “Wanna see you get off, hyung.”

Felix trembles in his hands, kissing back, snaking a hand between them. “You can’t – you can’t touch me,” he reminds Jeongin, maybe reminds himself. Jeongin hates it, but he doesn’t protest. He just wants to see . 

“I won’t,” he says. Hesitates for a second. “I can still kiss you?”

“Fuck, please,” Felix says, and, “I’ll die if you don’t. Kiss me.”

That’s easy. Jeongin does. He can feel Felix’s hand working at himself between them, rubbing at his cock furiously. His body shudders and twitches, hips jolting upwards into his hand, mouthing insistently at Jeongin’s jaw, his lips, his neck. Felix’s mouth gets caught wide on a moan, and Jeongin kisses into it, does all the work when Felix can’t stop making noise.

“Fuck, Innie,” he says, spit slick and rasping, breath warm against Jeongin’s face. “Fuck, I won’t – I’m not gonna last long –”

“Come, then, hyung,” Jeongin murmurs, “I wanna see. Show me.” He keeps his hands well clear, keeps them buried in Felix’s hair, keeps his mouth attached to Felix’s instead of anywhere else. Felix’s head draws back, neck and throat revealed, and his teeth bite into the kiss-swollen flush of his lip. 

“Ah, Jeongin-ah, I’m –” He can feel Felix’s release splatter between them, feel it dripping down his abs, Felix’s cock twitching against his stomach. “Fuck. Fuck .”

The tension floods out of him. Jeongin exhales in a rush, watches Felix’s face carefully as he blinks, slow and heavy. He swallows, feeling like he’s swallowing around a rock. “Holy shit.”

“Yeah,” Felix agrees. “Yeah, that’s. That was. Yeah.”

Jeongin settles his weight onto Felix’s body more fully, limbs heavy and pleasure-sticky, then winces as the movement jostles the come across Felix’s belly and between their tangled legs. “Eugh,” he says, and climbs out of the bed. “Do you have, like, wet wipes?”

“My post-coital cuddles,” Felix says dejectedly. Jeongin’s fumbling through the nightstand, looking for something to clean them off with, when Felix’s chin hooks over his shoulder; he presses his come-sticky stomach to Jeongin’s back, then cackles when Jeongin flinches. “Yeah, uh, on the shelf. Over there.” He points, jostling them both, reminding Jeongin of the come now dribbling down his spine. Mostly Felix’s, probably, but – something coils tight in Jeongin’s chest at the thought that maybe it’s both of theirs. Together.

“That’s so fucking gross, ” Jeongin says, pitchy. “Get off me, hyung, Jesus.”

“All your fault,” Felix sing-songs. His voice is bubbly, moves up and down his full register like it can’t contain the breadth of his joy. Jeongin grumbles something half-formed and uncharitable under his breath, but leans back into Felix for just another moment, enjoying the weight of his body, the press of his chest against Jeongin’s back. And then the tacky drying of come between.

“Okay, nope. Come on.” He moves. Felix clings on for about as long as he can, which is long enough for Jeongin to stand three quarters of the way up before he lets go, flopping back onto his bed with a huff. Jeongin spares him a glance, takes one second to look at the image he makes – sex-mussed, flushed, eyes fluttered shut and sprawled out, naked on the sheets – before he has to look away. His heart feels like it might beat straight out of his chest.

“I can’t believe you’re abandoning me,” Felix says, dramatic. “After I gave you such a good orgasm. Jeonginnie. Innie. Come back.”

By the time he’s finished speaking, Jeongin has already collected the packet of wipes. He drops one straight on Felix’s chest, just to see the way he twitches and whines about the shock of cold, and then relents. He cleans up quickly, gently, moving Felix’s legs apart and swiping over his stomach. When he’s done, Felix’s arms reach out again, snaking around Jeongin’s waist tightly, barely an inch between them.

“I have to throw these out,” Jeongin complains. He strains against Felix’s hold for as long as it takes to deposit the wipes on Felix’s bedside table, then lets himself be pulled closer. He feels boneless. Blissed out. Felix nuzzles into the junction of his shoulder and his throat, mouthing idly at the skin, and Jeongin grumbles; the ghost of pleasure sparks over his skin at the touch. The reminder of remembered arousal. He closes his eyes for just a moment, wonders how he must look. As sex-mussed as Felix, maybe? His hair is probably a mess. The skin over his hips stings where Felix had raked his nails over it, and the thought of raised red marks sends another pleasant shiver through him.

Felix hums, low enough that it vibrates through both of them. “What’re you thinking about?”

“Marks,” Jeongin says honestly, startling himself. He presses into the cradle of Felix’s arms. Adds, a little nonsensically, “Mirrors.”

Felix chuckles. “You sound sleepy.”

“Absolutely not,” Jeongin insists. His body feels like the fossil that settles to the bottom of the riverbed, hidden by the flood-tossed silt until it all settles anew. Felix still smells like perfume and sweat. Jeongin has fucked and been fucked, been with men and women, but the aftermath of this pleasure runs deeper than anything else he’s felt – it sits in his marrow, where the ugly things live. Felix holds him anyway. “Hyung,” Jeongin murmurs. Warm. Safe.

Something clicks elsewhere in the room, but Jeongin buries his face in Felix’s shoulder, sinks into the sweet satedness of his own body. His bangs are sweatier than they’d been when he’d arrived. Felix shifts and makes an inquisitive sound.

“He gets like this after one? ” comes a voice that is definitely not Felix’s.

Felix’s body shakes as he laughs quietly. “He came pretty hard. Yah, Seungminnie, don’t be mean.”

“He’d probably like that,” Seungmin says dismissively. Jeongin makes a noise, neither here nor there. “He looks half asleep.”

“Why are you even here?” Jeongin musters up to ask, words half muffled into Felix’s skin.

A rustle of fabric – Seungmin shrugging. “You left the door open.”

Felix sounds vaguely alarmed. “You tried to come in!”

“And you liked that, ” Seungmin says. There’s more noise, footsteps, and then the bed sinks down. Seungmin, lying next to them. “Can we order food yet? I’ve been waiting for hours.”

“I’m hungry,” Jeongin has capacity to say. He doesn’t want to look at Seungmin quite yet, though. He and Felix are both still naked. And Seungmin is lying next to them. So many lines have just been drawn over, scuffed out, washed away. Crossed.

Felix’s hand pats the top of his head gently, and then just stays there, fingertips scratching mildly at Jeongin’s scalp. “We’ll get food. What do you want?”

“I don’t fucking know, carbs,” Jeongin says waspishly. He lifts his head to peer at Seungmin, who looks levelly back at him. Fully clothed. Jesus fucking Christ. “Why are you here. ”

“You’re cute,” Seungmin says. He reaches over to fit his hand next to Felix’s, scritching at Jeongin’s scalp. “Stamina needs work.”

Jeongin splutters. He is not equipped to have this conversation right now. His whole ass is out. Seungmin’s fingers toy with his hair, and there’s a smirk playing at the edge of Seungmin’s lips, and something burns unsettled under Jeongin’s skin. Felix squirms underneath Jeongin, says, “Seungmin-ah, can you pass my phone? I’ll order something.”

“Get it yourself,” Seungmin says.

Felix presses a kiss to Jeongin’s throat. Seungmin’s eyes track the motion. “I’m trapped,” Felix says, sounding far too pleased about it.

Seungmin makes a fuss but he does retrieve Felix’s phone. The screen lights up as he passes it over – Jeongin’s eye catches on a series of notifications, ones that make his heart stutter a little, his brow scrunch. Felix opens a delivery app without even looking at them.

The room lapses into silence. Until Jeongin says, “tell me more about this bet.”

“You told him about it?” Seungmin says, vaguely accusatory. Felix just hums, noncommittally. “It’s stupid, Innie.”

“Wasn’t it your idea?”

“That’s why it’s stupid,” Felix says. He nuzzles into Jeongin’s chest quickly, hair tickling his chin.

“Is that what you were talking about earlier?” Jeongin asks, frowning at Seungmin. “When you said you pushed everyone.”

Seungmin makes a face. “Kind of. I didn’t expect everyone to take it so… seriously.”

“Is that why Jisung-hyung wouldn’t let me – yesterday?” He doesn’t really want to think about that, something still churning in his gut about it, thinking about what Jisung said. But Seungmin and Felix both hesitate.

“Jisung has his own…” Felix pauses. He wavers around the words, like he isn’t sure which one to use. “He’s…”

“Hyunjin came up with the rules,” Seungmin says, when Felix doesn’t continue. “That we could touch you, but if you touched us, it would be… I don’t know, crossing a line. Jisungie got in his head about it.”

“I think I hurt him,” Jeongin says, carefully. He doesn’t say that Jisung hurt him, too. But maybe something in his voice gives him away.

Felix pushes his head into Jeongin’s chest again, like a cat. “I think we went about this the wrong way. And we’re really sorry about that. But I did bet on Jisung, and I will split it with you if you fuck him first.”

Seungmin makes a noise. “Hey, I bet on Chan-hyung. I’ll split that with you if you fuck him first, Innie.”

“That’s so fucking stupid,” Jeongin says. He almost has to laugh. 

“Yeah,” Seungmin agrees easily. He slings a lazy arm over Jeongin’s bare back, the soft cloth of his sleeve sweet against Jeongin’s skin. “I think – the game made it feel less frightening, or something. You know how Hyunjin gets about things changing. Lix-ya, can we get pizza?” Seungmin weaves in and out of earnestness so quickly it makes Jeongin dizzy. “I want margarita.”

“Oh, the most boring fucking option,” Felix grouses into Jeongin’s chest. He wriggles a little, dislodging Jeongin so that he tumbles off of Felix’s chest, lands on his back between the two of them; Seungmin rubs a hand absent-mindedly over Jeongin’s stomach. His entire cock is out. Seungmin is acting so nonchalant about it. “Yeah, okay,” Felix adds, then glances over at Jeongin. “Iyennie, what do you – oh, holy shit, your face is so red. You’re so cute.”

“Fuck off,” Jeongin says, whisper-quiet. He crosses his arms over his chest like it’ll preserve his modesty. They should’ve at least gone under one of the blankets. Seungmin is just looking at him, eyebrow quirked, radiating something like smugness with such intensity Jeongin almost chokes on it. “Um. Can we get something with meat, hyung, please.” His voice is humiliatingly meek.

“You’re so sweet when you’re embarrassed,” Seungmin observes. He drags his fingers over Jeongin’s abs, then laughs when the muscles jump. 

He wills himself not to get hard right now. He really wills it. “I’m not embarrassed,” Jeongin says, even though he crosses his arms tighter around himself while he says it. “Just. We should put clothes on.”

Felix laughs. He, at least, seems entirely unbothered by his state of nakedness. “If you want to, Innie.”

“No, wait,” says Seungmin, even though neither of them have made any movement. “Wait until the food gets here.”

“What, you want to stare at my dick that badly?” Jeongin says, snappy. He’s not embarrassed. His dick is not getting hard again. He tries to ignore the fire in his stomach, the flames stoked by Seungmin’s attention, by Felix’s. Seungmin’s hand is still splayed across his abs, his fingernails scraping against the muscle absently. His dick is not getting hard.

“Seems like you like me staring at your dick, Jeonginnie,” Seungmin says, incredibly casual. To his other side, Felix huffs another gentle laugh, still tapping away on his phone.

Jeongin makes a muffled groan into his own forearms. “It’s like you want me to die,” he says inanely. He cannot be fucking blamed. Just – something about the way Seungmin looks at him, like it’s the most normal thing in the world to see Jeongin and want him, and the way he drags his hands over Jeongin’s stomach, and the expanse of golden skin that is Felix splayed out naked in Jeongin’s peripheral vision, and Seungmin sprawled next to them fully clothed – it’s a lot, is all. It’s a lot. Fuck. Seungmin trails a finger lower along Jeongin’s torso, tantalisingly close to the crease of his hip, and then laughs when Jeongin bucks quick and jerky into the motion.

Seungmin chuckles. “Can we have garlic bread, Lix?”

“What the fuck,” Jeongin tells the ceiling. Seungmin presses his palm broad and flat against Jeongin’s stomach, casually possessive, and leans over to glance at Felix’s phone screen. 

“If you want,” Felix says, tilting the screen so that Seungmin can tap at it. Jeongin feels caught between them, trapped, a dam breaking. Felix’s eyes dart towards him, and then to Seungmin, and then back to his phone screen. “One margarita, one garlic bread, and one pepperoni? We can share.”

“Sounds good,” Seungmin says. His palm slides over Jeongin’s stomach, up to his ribs. “How long?”

“Thirty minutes?” Felix says. The sheets rustle as he shrugs. “Probably. Hey, let me up. I’m gonna go take a shower before it gets here.”

Jeongin moves a little, shifting closer to Seungmin so Felix can move too. He leaves his phone by the pillow, and shuffles around his room long enough to throw out the used wipes and pull a hoodie on, tugging it down. Jeongin follows his every movement carefully. “No pants?” he asks, when Felix goes to open his bedroom door.

Felix just grins, wolfish, teeth all sharp in his mouth. Seungmin, though, sighs. “You wouldn’t even believe how many times I’ve seen his dick,” he says nonchalantly, punctuated with a very notable look at Jeongin’s own. It makes him… feel things. Small, but in a way that crawls down his spine and nests somewhere in his stomach. A stab of something bitter. Like it’s just roommate things.

“I’ve never seen Chan-hyung’s dick,” Jeongin says. “Maybe you guys just don’t have boundaries.”

Felix glances over his shoulder at them, the long lines of his legs a little obscene. Jeongin gazes at the plush muscle of his thighs and swallows. “Seungminnie doesn’t mind,” Felix chirps, arching his back for a moment in a posture that highlights his ass and may or may not haunt Jeongin’s dreams for the rest of his life, then saunters out into the hallway like he owns the place. Which he kind of does. Given that it’s his house. God. Jeongin can’t even think straight; desire spins his head up into a whirlwind and he’s grasping at everything that flutters by in the storm. Heat. Jealousy. Laughter. All stirred up and mixed together while Seungmin scrapes his nail perilously close to Jeongin’s pebbled nipple and Jeongin tries very hard not to move. His dick is a lost cause.

Seungmin says, softly, “You think Chan-hyung would fuck you, Iyennie? Or do you want to fuck him?”

Jeongin squirms. Thinks of the outline of Chan’s soft cock in his too-tight sweats, the ones that he wears around the apartment because they’re too small to wear in public, because Jeongin doesn’t mind, right? Right. Haha. The pad of Seungmin’s thumb draws an arc below Jeongin’s areola and trails goosebumps in its wake. Jeongin manages, swallowing, “I don’t think it matters what I want. Not with Chan-hyung.”

“You don’t think he’d give you whatever you want?” Seungmin asks. Like it’s obvious, like it’s common knowledge. That this is something Chan would do for him.

“You aren’t just saying that so I’ll fuck him first and you can get your money?” Jeongin says, something sharp and bitter at the base of his throat. He says it on purpose; he knows Seungmin is right. There isn’t much Chan wouldn’t give him. Even this, if Jeongin asked, he’d get eventually.

He doesn’t want to ask, though. He just… wants. 

Seungmin wavers. He shifts, sitting up a little. His teeth bite into his lip, nervous, pulling at the skin. “I wouldn’t just say that, Innie. I… This hurt you. That wasn’t any of our intentions.”

“I don’t know what you expected,” Jeongin says, feeling a little put out by it all. “I just want to be involved, hyung. With all of you.”

“You can be,” Seungmin tells him, earnest. “You will be.”

It feels too tender to hold within a body, like Jeongin’s going to burst his banks with it. So he shrinks from it. Easier, habitual, to pull away. Maybe that’s half the problem. Maybe Chan thinks he wouldn’t want this, maybe all of them have, or do, or will – Jeongin takes a shuddering breath, feels his chest heave with it. “Seungmin-hyung,” he says, voice raw, a little pathetic. Small. Like someone who needs taking care of. Like everything he doesn’t want to be.

“Iyennie,” Seungmin coos, and then, lower, “Jeonginnie.” His fingers settle over Jeongin’s nipple; his other hand is wandering down the column of Jeongin’s torso, lingering on his waist. “Jeongin-ah. Are we still talking about feelings, or do you want to get yourself off while I watch?”

Jeongin might have whiplash. He makes an embarrassing little sound when Seungmin pinches at his nipple; is reminded, with a dizzying sort of abruptness, that talking about feelings had definitely not killed his boner. “What the fuck, hyung,” he says petulantly, and then, “Why do I have to get myself off? You’re right here.”

“I want to watch you,” Seungmin says easily, “and I think you want me to watch you, as well. Or not. We can do something else.”

Jeongin swallows, thick and heavy. Seungmin is still fully clothed next to him, but he scans his eyes up and down his body, can see the tell-tale signs of his arousal, too. The bulge of his dick in his pyjama pants, his heavy breathing, the sweet flush over the bridge of his nose that could almost be innocent. “No, I. I want to.”

“Mm, you want to what?”

He can’t think straight. He can’t think. “I want to get myself off while you watch,” Jeongin chokes out. Even like this, the words feel like things he shouldn’t be saying. Taboo, in the sanctuary of Felix’s room. It’s a kind of novelty, maybe. A kind of tension, stretched thin and wide across them, one that bristles and raises all the hair on the back of his neck. Things he wants. Things that can’t be had.

Seungmin’s smile is a revelation as it breaks across his face; he drags his nails over the plane of Jeongin’s pec and his smile only widens when Jeongin shudders into it. “You’re so cute,” Seungmin says again, sounding genuinely delighted and – something else, too. A little demeaning. “Go on, then. Show me how you like it.” He plasters himself against Jeongin’s side, eyes fixed on Jeongin’s crotch. Says, “I might learn something.”

Jeongin feels the flush on his own cheeks and knows he must be humiliatingly red; Seungmin’s eyes track the movement as he reaches for his own cock and fists it loosely, hissing. Skin on too-sensitive skin – like if sandpaper was horny, Jeongin thinks deliriously, but better, almost too much but somehow still not enough. He doesn’t usually bother to get himself off twice. Knows he can, but doesn’t see the point when he’s by himself, when one is enough to wipe him out and help him fall asleep faster. But Seungmin makes a low, interested sound as Jeongin gingerly works his hand over his still-sensitive shaft, trembles into his own touch, and – it’s not normally like this. The burn of being watched transmutes his own hand into something foreign, electrifying. Impossibly good. Jeongin fucks shallowly into his own fist, whines softly.

“There you go,” Seungmin murmurs, a little condescending. His eyes flicker to Jeongin’s for a moment, as though gauging his reaction, before darting right back to the flushed-red head of Jeongin’s dick where it peeks out from between his fingers. 

God. It’s different now, with Seungmin. With all of them. Jeongin’s head spins, rubbing his hand over the head of his cock. He bites back his moans, careful not to be too loud. There’s something precious between them, fragile in the air. 

“Let me hear you,” Seungmin says, instead. He reaches out one hand to thumb over Jeongin’s bottom lip, pulling it away from his teeth. “What, are you embarrassed Felix might hear? He’s already heard that, Jeonginnie. Let me.”

He wasn’t thinking about Felix, but now he is. Seungmin’s thumb pulls his lip away, pulls it down, drags another moan out of him. He’s in Felix’s room right now, Felix’s bed. Felix could hear, could come back at any time. Jeongin’s hand works over his cock a little faster. “Seungminnie –”

“Yeah,” Seungmin says, low, pleased. His thumb skims over Jeongin’s lip, and he actually laughs softly, close enough that his breath gusts over Jeongin’s cheek. “What, you liked that idea, Iyennie? Just like you liked me nearly walking in on you?”

Jeongin’s breath punches its way out of its chest. Um. Jesus. White water spins around and through him, and he takes one long, slow breath, another, tries to get his thoughts in some semblance of order. Maybe mildly counterintuitive when Seungmin is staring at his dick with that odd precise tunnel-vision he gets sometimes, but. Jeongin can deal. “Please tell me you’re going to forget about that,” he says, as dry and poised as he can manage while dragging his thumb over the head of his cock, pleasure a muted throb in the foreground of his mind, like one of those illusions where the figure and the ground switch back and forth: one, then the other, both, neither. 

“Hm. No.” Seungmin sounds dangerously pleased. “It’s going in the spreadsheet.” A loaded pause, as Jeongin jerks himself off like a teenager in the bathroom except that this isn’t even his house, this is Felix’s bed, and Seungmin is still staring at him; Seungmin adds, gleeful, “I’m just the messenger, Iyennie. You’re the one that gets off on the thought of your hyungs overhearing you.”

Jeongin doesn’t have the mental fortitude to correct Seungmin about any of that right now. The image is hot, after all, and he tightens his fist around his dick, feels the looming edge come ever closer. He moans, louder, feels like he might get a cramp in his leg from how tightly wound he is, and then feels Seungmin laugh next to him.

“You want to come, Ayen-ah?” Seungmin asks, voice low, rippling through Jeongin. “You can come whenever you want, honey.”

Jeongin swallows tightly, blood rushing in his ears. “Seungmin-hyung – hyung –” he moves his hand faster, tighter, everything closing in a little more. This orgasm feels different, more overwhelming, like his heart might beat straight out of his chest. Like he’ll drown in it, all the water rushing through him.

The door opens. Seungmin’s eyes flick upwards, and a dangerous smirk spreads across his face, and Jeongin looks too. Felix, his hair wet and flicked back off his forehead, a towel around his waist but nothing else. A drop of water trails down the side of his neck, between his pecs. Jeongin feels like he’s going crazy.

“Oh –” he says, blinking hard, “Oh, fuck –”

He comes so quickly it’s almost definitely embarrassing this time, meeting Felix’s eye as he spills over his hand. Seungmin’s laughing next to him, but he’s watching Jeongin’s cock, watching it twitch and jerk. Jeongin feels like he might pass out. There’s a honeyed, faintly derisive edge to Seungmin’s laughter, and it only winds him higher, wrings another aftershock out of him through nothing but the sound of it; pleasure jitters sparky and excited under Jeongin’s skin, all through his body, overwhelming. He blinks hard at the ceiling and considers his life choices. They did not warn him that being an idol would involve this, whatever – whatever any of it – God, he doesn’t even know what it means. Only that he wants it. However he can have it, God, he wants it.

“I told you not to break him,” Felix says, and it’s a joke, but his tone sounds faintly wondering, soft-edged. Jeongin hears him come closer, then feels the bed dip as he flings himself back onto it on Jeongin’s other side. “Shit. You okay, Innie?” A hand in his hair. Jeongin closes his eyes and feels them stinging. Felix says, warm and disbelieving, “It’s kinda hot that you came just cause I walked into the room, you know.” A kiss pressed to Jeongin’s brow. Seungmin shuffles around to lay his head on Jeongin’s still-bare chest, his hair tickling Jeongin’s chin, seemingly unbothered by the come still pooling there.

Jeongin groans, muffled, “You’re both as fucking bad as each other.”

“He’ll hate it in, like, five minutes,” Felix chirps, because he is a telepath who somehow has inferred, correctly, that Jeongin was referring to their tendencies to not be weird about come, postcoitally. Or to be weird about it. Whichever. “Just gets high off talking down to people.”

“Rude,” Seungmin says, sounding very pleased. Jeongin can feel his lips moving against his skin. “When’s the pizza here, Felix?”

“Mm, soon.” A hand scritching through Jeongin’s hair. “Jeongin-ah, you look like you’re going to fall asleep again. Want us to leave you be?”

“No,” Jeongin says to the ceiling, to the dark behind his eyelids. No, he’s not going to fall asleep. No, he doesn’t want to be left alone. His heart feels too heavy for the rest of him, his body so light and unspooled by his orgasm it feels like it might float away, something aching in his chest. “No, can you, uh – I’ll come eat with you guys. In a minute, when food gets here.” He swallows. His voice seems almost anonymous if he keeps his eyes closed, like it could be anyone’s. A kid from Busan. An idol who, somehow, impossibly, made it, beat the odds, survived. More than survived. Jeongin, or the version of him in the mirror who seemed like he knew what he wanted, had what he wanted, or the version of him who bowed his head when the flood came. Didn’t build an ark. This wasn’t anything so neat as a coupling-up, two of every animal, idyllic on the boat as the world drowned itself around them.

“How do you do this?” Jeongin asks the dark. “How do you guys make it work? I –” He feels choked, feels freed by the strange satedness living in his bones. Of having what he wants, has wanted, will want. Every tense of desire. “I know we can’t call it anything. I know we can’t be doing this, like, contractually.”

Seungmin makes a little discontented sound, then hesitates, as though searching for words. Jeongin can hear the three of them breathing together. He knows how to slip into a shared rhythm, the way he would when they all danced together, like even his body wasn’t only his own. He’d let them have it, he thinks. He’d let all of them have it. Seungmin says, hesitant, “You say that like any of us have the answers, Jeonginnie.”

Come drying tacky on Jeongin’s still-bare stomach. Felix’s hand working through his hair. “So, what? We just keep our mouths shut?” he says, swallows around an envy that runs deeper than just want me, a more vicious current, something ugly in the undertow. “How can you live like that?”

“I don’t know,” Felix says. His voice is a pleasant gravel – not quite the darkest it can go, the forced register he whips out in the recording booth, but a comfortable low rumble beneath Jeongin’s skin. Living in his bones. “I just – don’t know how we could live not like this. I don’t think I could go back.” He presses a brief, fervent kiss to Jeongin’s shoulder. “I don’t think I could undo this. I don’t want to.”

“We’re just,” Seungmin says, then pauses again. His hand clenches on Jeongin’s hip for a moment, possessive, almost vicious. “I don’t know. I think we all want enough that it got impossible to deny it.” Jeongin swallows. He knows the feeling. “And the dam broke, and – and we couldn’t go back.”

“I know,” Jeongin whispers. His voice sounds hoarse. “I – I don’t want to. Hyung.” And it means Felix, and Seungmin, and both, and neither. “I don’t – I couldn’t undo this. I don’t think I could stop wanting you, any of you.”

“You don’t have to,” Felix says easily. “We have us. That’s enough.”

Today 00:04 [ Channie ] Guys you have to know this is ridiculous. You have to know this. No one is taking Jeonginnie’s virginity

Today 00:05 [ seungmeong ] Answer quickly: Are you just mad because I bet on you?

Today 00:08 [ lixie🐣 ] You guys know he isn’t a virgin right?

Several people are typing…

Chapter Text

Jeongin passes through most of the next morning in a sort of daze, feeling sort of like a ghost, like water slipping through his fingers. He eats breakfast with Felix and Seungmin, but after that, they pile him into a company car and wave him off. He goes home first, to shower and change and pack his sheet music for vocal lessons. And stand at the kitchen table and stare out the window for five seconds, listening carefully to see if Chan is home. 

He isn’t. Jeongin checks his watch. It’s still early: if he isn’t asleep, he’s probably still in the studio. Jeongin breathes in. Relishes the aloneness. And remembers how much he hates it. 

It’s sweet, in an odd off-kilter way. They’re all so tangled together into each other – coworkers, friends, everything else – that Chan always insists they must want breaks from each other, that they all need space to be their own people, to see childhood friends, to eat breakfast alone. He’s probably right that it would be healthy. Then, of course, he turns around and gives more of himself to their work than any of the others, so – he’s one to talk. Jeongin should enjoy the space to himself, he knows, in a profession where it comes so rarely, but the apartment, its quiet song, the hum of the fridge and the clicking sounds the heating makes as it warms up – Jeongin breathes through it, alone, alone.

That’s kind of stupid, he thinks. He’s a grown man. He’ll see all of them today – dance practice in the midday block, after his early vocal lesson – and he fucking lives with Chan.

Still.

He finishes getting ready and goes to the company early. He sits in the company car and keeps glancing to his left, expecting someone else to be sitting there. He’s too early: Jeongin spends half an hour longer than he needs to warming up. Keeps glancing over his shoulder, walking through the corridors, wondering if he’ll run into any of his bandmates.

Vocal goes – well. He likes it, usually, singing scales by rote, working through parts of songs, bits and pieces. Today, though, it feels strange. Every time he sings a line and not a full chorus, a verse and no bridge, something rattles through him. He just wants something to feel like… like a whole. Not just a part.

Usually it helps, to do something he’s good at. And he doesn’t even fuck up any more than is normal in lessons, the rough-draft waver of his voice excusable at eight in the morning alone with a vocal coach; still, something sits low in his belly and gnaws there, insatiable in a muted way that just leaves Jeongin on edge. Something chewing at his insides. 

He takes five minutes and checks his phone, swipes away the notifications he was going to ignore anyway, blinks long and hard at the empty notification tray like he’s waiting for something to change. Some announcement of his adulthood. Desirability. And then his break is over, and he sings in rapid-fire bursts until he knows the shape of an uncomfortable six-note jump better than he knows his childhood bedroom, the weight of his own body, and then he’s bowing to his coach as she shuffles out the door and abruptly he has the practice room to himself and nothing to do for at least half an hour. 

An unprecedented luxury. This end of the year, their schedules are kinder, the edges of their lives less jagged; Jeongin can eat carbs and salt and drink if he really wants and stay up later than advisable and be the only one that shoulders the consequences of it. It’s odd, to be in possession of himself like this. He doesn’t know what to do with it.

Half an hour. Jeongin toes open the practice room door, trying to decide whether a snack from the company cafeteria downstairs will fuck with him during dance practice, when he catches a familiar silhouette further down the hall. Hyunjin, carrying a jacket and a folder in his arms, head ducked a little, like he’s trying not to make eye contact with anyone. 

“Hyung!”

He doesn’t look up. Jeongin pulls the practice room door shut, jogging down the hallway to catch up to him. “Hyunjin-hyung!”

Hyunjin makes a face like a deer in headlights before his brain catches up. His expression relaxes when he realises it’s Jeongin in front of him. And then tenses up again, mock irritation, mostly a joke. “You scared me!” he reaches out, knocking against Jeongin’s shoulder. Jeongin ignores how the touch sends sparks ricocheting through him. “Aish. Kids these days.”

So it’s like that, then.

Jeongin has to watch his tongue, because they’re in public, but he cuts Hyunjin a sideways glance, wants to scoff. Kids. It used to be funny. It’s funny, really, he tells himself. It is. “I was thinking about getting food,” he says, falling into step too easily at Hyunjin’s side and trying not to stare too overtly. “Do you, uh, wanna?”

Hyunjin frowns. Jeongin’s gaze catches on his lips and then – hovers there, snagged. “Aren’t you dancing with hyung soon? I’d puke.”

“Skill issue,” Jeongin says, then ducks the offended hand that swipes his way. Warmth burgeons in his chest. “How d’you know my schedule, hyung? Are you stalking me or something?” It’s public enough between them all, of course. But – Hyunjin must have thought to check. Or –

“Minho-hyung mentioned it,” Hyunjin says, a little too offhand, just slightly strained. Jeongin drags his eyes, with effort, away from the swell of Hyunjin’s lower lip and a little higher, and can just make out the colour blooming patchy and humiliated beneath Hyunjin’s makeup, sprawling across his cheekbones. Most people wouldn’t be able to see it. Jeongin only spots the angry blush because he knows it’s there, could already hear it in the way that Hyunjin spoke.

Hmm. They’re talking about him. Hyunjin. And Minho. “When did you see Minho-hyung? Why were you talking about me to him?”

“So many questions, Jeonginnie,” Hyunjin says, reaching out to swat him again. Jeongin dodges. “We weren’t really, um. Talking about you. I just had dinner with him and Jisungie last night. Is all.”

“You don’t sound very sure.”

“You’re hearing things.” Hyunjin says. He’s still blushing. Jeongin suppresses the urge to reach out and touch his face, to feel the warmth of it. That would be… weird, probably. “I was with them last night. You can ask Minho-hyung about it if you really must.”

“I’ll ask him what you were saying about me, too,” Jeongin says, “if you really don’t want to tell me.”

Hyunjin squawks. “You don’t need to do that,” he says, all in a rush.

Jeongin tilts his head, feeling faintly vindicated. He can’t say what he wants to say, not here, in a hallway in the company building, with the footsteps of others echoing just out of sight. Can’t say, Is it about how you gave me the best blowjob of my life the other night, or maybe Is it about how you are so fucking incapable of being normal about me that you came up with a convoluted way of insisting it wasn’t really sex. “Hm,” he says instead, and chews on the inside of his cheek. Hyunjin glances sideways at him and then visibly goes pale. Muck settles to the bottom of Jeongin’s stomach. “Where are you going, hyung?”

“Um,” Hyunjin says, swallowing. Jeongin watches the bob of his throat and pretends he isn’t hungry; the maw of the river looms in his chest. “Practice room, I was going to –”

“I’ll keep you company,” Jeongin says, and smiles in the way that always makes Hyunjin fold. He watches Hyunjin struggle to reject him: the shifty-quick dart of his eyes, the way his fingers tighten on the folder in his hand. Notes, probably. The pseudo-privacy of a practice room; maybe Jeongin can speak his mind there. “I have half an hour, hyung,” he says, grinning.

Hyunjin looks torn for approximately three seconds before he relents. “Okay. Okay, come on. You can help me. Watch me.”

Watch me. Something Jeongin is becoming intimately acquainted with, these last few days. He nods, though. Hyunjin nods, too, seeking confirmation. The steps down to the practice rooms are worn and familiar, and the halls of the company building are relatively empty at this time. They don’t see anyone else on the way, which is probably a good thing, since Hyunjin looks like he’s about ready to run off, and Jeongin doesn’t particularly feel like talking to anyone else.

Once they’re inside, though, Hyunjin seems to relax a little bit. The pseudo-privacy. Faux security. He goes to plug his phone into the sound system. Jeongin lingers near the doors, crouches down on the floor. Watches Hyunjin in the floor to ceiling mirrors. Watches himself watching Hyunjin. He should look changed, he thinks, like a different person than he was a week ago, somehow both more and less himself; instead, he’s unremarkable next to Hyunjin. Isn’t everyone?

“Hyung,” he says, before he can talk himself out of it. He swallows. “Would you do it again?”

Hyunjin drops his phone onto the wooden floor, and Jeongin watches it clatter and bounce in its special drop-proof case. Minho had bought it, he thinks. A sort of backhanded gift. A second too late, Hyunjin stoops to pick it up, scrabbling at the floor and actually fumbling it so hard he almost drops it again; Jeongin watches him in the mirror rather than looking straight at him. This way, he can see almost half of Hyunjin’s face. The naked panic there. 

“What?”

“Sex,” Jeongin says, and then, specifically, “with me. Would you. Again.”

The words come out in parts and not as a whole. Hyunjin faces away from him and does not seem particularly inclined to turn around, but his face is reflected across the room and so Jeongin sees the way it cycles through his emotions, not like he is trying to hide them but like he is just unaware of his being observed. Jeongin feels like he should be looking away.

“I – Jeongin –” more emotions, visceral and clear as day. Something within him shatters, splinters across his cheeks, his lips. “Why…?”

“I just –” Want to know. To know what? That you don’t regret this. That we don’t need to regret it. That this isn’t a mistake. That none of us are making mistakes. Jeongin falters. “Just. Curious, I guess.”

Hyunjin’s shoulders are up near his ears; he looks cornered, Jeongin thinks. Trapped. He watches the laugh play out in slow-motion across Hyunjin’s face in the mirror: “Sex,” Hyunjin scoffs, almost demeaning, almost. Chewing on his lip like he’s trying to convince himself he means it. “I mean, Iyennie, it’s not like – that wasn’t – I’d do what we did again, if you wanted,” he adds, almost magnanimous, like he’s doing Jeongin a great favour. “I liked making you feel good. But it’s not like we had sex.”

“For fuck’s sake, ” Jeongin snaps, and watches Hyunjin jump and startle in the mirror. His eyes are wide and – still frightened, Jeongin thinks; Hyunjin fights when he feels cornered, lashes out when he thinks he’s got his back to a wall. God knows all of them are familiar enough with that, after everything that happened way back in ‘17 with Jisung. So Jeongin should back down, maybe. Settle. Let Hyunjin work his way around to the idea in his own time so that nothing blows the group dynamic up in their face. 

Jeongin says, prickly, feeling his own lip curl, “Would it kill you to admit I know my way around my own body, hyung? Do you really hate the idea of me having sex that much?” He watches it hit home in exactly the way he expects it to: first Hyunjin flinches, then, in the mirror, his brows knit together in something vicious, wounded. Salt in the wound, then, or river water: “It’s not like you were my first blowjob or anything. But I wanted it. I wanted you.”

“I –”

Hyunjin flounders. Things look so different here. Hyunjin is one of the strongest people Jeongin knows; now, he looks small. Young. Fragile, worn away. He can’t meet Jeongin’s eye. 

“Hyung,” Jeongin says, very carefully. “I want to understand. It was your idea. Right?”

His body heaves, breath wrenched out of his lungs like hands pulling it from him. Hyunjin blinks heavily. He moves like his body is not his own. “Ayennie, I just… wanted you to be sure that you wanted it.”

“And you couldn’t trust me when I said that I do?”

Hyunjin scrubs a hand over his face. “I didn’t want any of us to take anything from you. That you didn’t want to give.”

Jeongin actually snorts out loud. “Oh, yeah. Lix-hyung mentioned you guys thought I was a virgin.” He tears his eyes away from Hyunjin’s form in the mirror and glances instead at himself; it had been years ago, now. He hadn’t felt fundamentally changed then and he doesn’t really now. Jeongin looks back at himself, tilts his head this way and that, momentarily vain: does he look like someone who wants sex, then? Does he look like someone who doesn’t? Mostly he just looks like himself, and that doesn’t answer anything, really, only sits sticky and undeniable in his throat.

“Jeonginnie,” Hyunjin says, sounding choked. Jeongin’s eyes flick back to him; his jaw is working, like he’s chewing on a half-formed sentence but can’t quite spit it out. Like he doesn’t know what to say. 

“I won’t break, hyung,” Jeongin says. Viciousness curdles in his belly and rears its head through the column of his trachea, works its way up his throat and slips free of his lips. “Just because you don’t know what you want, doesn’t mean the rest of us are the same. You just made it my problem.” 

Hyunjin looks hurt. Like Jeongin just suckerpunched him in the gut, and his body trembles like it wants to fold, doubled over, but he remains standing in spite of it. “Jeongin,” Hyunjin says, breathless, Jeongin’s name all shallow in his mouth, spilling up and over his teeth. “I know you won’t break,” he says, throat bobbing. Jeongin watches it move; thinks of how this all started. Hyunjin on his knees. Straight from the source. “I… Changbin and I, we…”

Jeongin swallows, bile and silt and muck stuck in his throat. “Hyunjin-hyung, please. Just talk to me.”

His face scrunches up, looking so unlike himself in the practice room mirrors that Jeongin has to look again. Keep looking, watching Hyunjin’s body warp and change and his face cycle through all of his emotions. He’s never been able to keep things from Jeongin, not since they were at school together. “I’m sorry,” Hyunjin manages to get out, like something is pulling the words free of him. Jeongin thinks, unfairly, that he looks two seconds from fleeing. Hyunjin’s stupid fucking lips work at the air until Jeongin can almost read the words he’s biting back; then he says, rushed, “Whatever. It doesn’t – need to mean anything. If you don’t want it to mean anything.” The jut of his throat as he swallows. His borderline pornographic tongue, visible for a moment as he breathes through his mouth the way he only does when he’s angry or frightened or both. Jeongin wants him so bad he can’t think straight.

“Wait,” Jeongin says. He twists to look at Hyunjin directly, sick of the mirror, the half-plane of Hyunjin’s face. “What?”

Hyunjin’s head is held high and proud and uncompromising, lip curled a little in something like disdain. His throat betrays him. Or maybe Jeongin is just too keyed into it, the way it bobs every time he swallows, the way Hyunjin swallows whenever he’s upset, after having had his cock down it. Whatever. “It didn’t matter,” Hyunjin says, clear, almost convincingly cold; his hands are fisted tightly into his hoodie. “Is that what you wanted to hear, Iyennie? You want me to talk to you? Fine. Blowjobs on demand if you’re in the mood. I had fun.” His knuckles are pale. “Just don’t tell me what it was or wasn’t, Jeonginnie. If that’s everything, I need the room to practice.”

Jeongin blinks at him; white water whirls through the gorge of his body, the tributary paths of his neurons, white noise in his ears. “Hyung –”

“Get out,” Hyunjin says. He turns away. Fiddles with his phone until music blares out of the sound system. Doesn’t pay much more attention to Jeongin at all.

Jeongin inhales, feeling worse than he did when he followed Hyunjin here in the first place. There are a lot of things left unsaid. Things Hyunjin is waiting for him to pick up, only Jeongin has no idea what he’s meant to be looking for. He leaves; clearly, Hyunjin isn’t interested in talking much more. The door slams shut behind him, unintentionally, but it happens all the same, and it feels like a severance. Something between them. 

Jeongin looks back once he’s in the corridor again. He can hear Hyunjin’s music, faintly, like it’s being played from miles away. He blinks hard. Checks his phone by rote. Turns it off, and then turns it back on, because he didn’t actually pay attention to anything on it the first time. He has a good morning text from Felix, because Felix is a loser like that, which he heart-reacts, and the standard slew of bickering in the eight-way group chat over nothing of any importance; his calendar reminds him that he has twenty minutes until he’s early for dance practice, forty until he’s late; their conditioning noona has posted his gym program for tomorrow. Minho has sent him a single emoji: a pair of pants. Jeongin blinks at it, utterly bemused, then reacts with thumbs-up in an effort to seem cool and like he definitely gets the joke.

Misgiving swirls in his chest. He glances up again at the closed practice room door, then makes himself turn away and start walking. Doesn’t matter where. Just so that he isn’t – lingering, looking pathetic, generally making himself into even more of a mess.

He can… he can go to the group practice room. Start warming up, or something. Or sit in silence, scrolling through Instagram reels, until someone else gets there. His body walks in that direction automatically, through familiar hallways, until he’s pushing open the door anyway. 

Minho is already here, lurking in the corner by the sound systems, some mirror image to Hyunjin. His hair is freshly washed and fluffy, unstyled, falling around his face in imperfect strands. He’s wearing joggers and a baggy t-shirt, something he could have slept in, and a cap shoved on top of his head. He looks up when Jeongin enters.

“You know you’re early,” Minho says. One eyebrow twitches beneath the cap. He looks good like this. He always looks good, Jeongin thinks. 

“So are you,” Jeongin counters lamely. His heart isn’t in it.

Minho blinks at him, but doesn’t look away. It’s kind of unnerving. “Did you want something?” he asks, with a sort of faux-levity, like he’s trying to convince himself. Jeongin watches the phone screen in his hand go dark; Minho makes no effort to wake it back up, only blinks at Jeongin again. “Or did you just miss hyung’s company?”

“As if I knew you’d be here,” Jeongin scoffs. The play-fighting comes a little more easily. He scuffs his foot over the polished wood floor, then says, startling himself, “Have you seen Chan-hyung today?”

“Hm.” Minho blinks again. They’re coming quickly, one after the other: that bemused flutter of his lashes, like he’s processing. “No. Why, did he seem off?”

“I wouldn’t know,” Jeongin says archly. Then winces. “Sorry.”

Minho just hums. “How was vocal?”

“What?”

“You had vocal,” Minho says patiently. He’s still looking at Jeongin, gaze piercing, heavy. Jeongin feels – pinned. Stuck beneath it. “How was it?”

“Oh,” Jeongin says. Obviously. He literally just finished at vocal practice. “It was good. Fine. Same as usual.”

“Good,” says Minho. His brow furrows a little. “You seem distracted, Ayen-ah. You okay?”

“Fine,” Jeongin says automatically, and then pauses. Mentally assesses. “Um. Yeah. Fine.”

“You’re not lying to hyung?”

Jeongin doesn’t think he’s lying. He feels… fine. Fine enough. Enough to do his job. “I just have a lot on my mind,” he says, which is definitely true. 

Minho looks a little lost, too. Jeongin doesn’t usually come to him for emotional support. “You want to talk about it?” he offers, sounding a little bit like he’d rather if Jeongin didn’t. “Or…” he takes a step closer, another, crossing the distance between them in a few meagre steps. “I could help take your mind off it.”

Jeongin stares at him. “Are you fucking serious?” he blurts, and then, wincing, “Hyung. Sorry. Um. Are you –?” It would be very difficult to misread the intent Minho is choreographing: his parted lips, his closeness, the way his eyes are fixed on Jeongin with unerring focus. Minho does that. Exaggerates his body language so that there’s no doubt as to what he’s trying to imply when he really wants to be understood. Jeongin thinks it comes of too many years of misreading on Minho’s part. So Jeongin looks blankly back at him, at the blatant desire, and says, “Why now. ”

Minho shrugs. “I heard it was open season. I’m good at taking boys’ minds off things.” Feigned nonchalance glitters in his eyes; he runs his gaze so obviously down Jeongin’s chest that it would be embarrassing to watch if Jeongin were in any other position. “I like doing things I’m good at. No pressure, though.”

And, well. Jeongin can’t say he’s never looked at Minho like that. He’d be stupid not to. “I. Um.”

“Seriously,” Minho says, like a switch flicking, like he’s taking a step back. “If you don’t want to. Right now, or ever. But if you do. You can let hyung take care of you, hm?”

“I – here?”

Minho checks his watch. Right, because he wears an actual watch and he actively uses it. It shouldn’t be attractive, Jeongin thinks. That’s a normal thing for people to do. He adamantly doesn’t look at the twist of the bones in Minho’s wrist, the pull of his tendons. “We have twenty minutes until the others will get here. We can lock the door, if you want.”

“Twenty –” Jeongin’s jaw works. The practice room. On company time. “You’re insane.”

Minho laughs, high and clear and smug. “Limited-time offer, Yennie. Nineteen minutes now.” He twists, the baggy neckline of his t-shirt drooping to expose his shoulder; it would be a transparently obvious ploy if it weren’t also working. Fuck. Minho moves over to the door and locks it, then glances back at Jeongin, and must be amused by whatever he sees when he looks; a smirk tugs at the edges of his lips.

Jeongin’s entire body blooms hot under Minho’s stare. He tries not to think about how Seungmin and his spreadsheet would laugh at Jeongin, if they were here, and then tries very hard not to think about Seungmin being here and laughing at him, and generally fails at the whole endeavour. “What does open season mean,” he says, belated and embarrassed, feeling clumsy and stupid under the weight of Minho looking at him. He is not equipped to handle this. It’s actually unethical.

Minho tilts his head, probably because he can’t raise one eyebrow without looking stupid. It shouldn’t be attractive; it sends a frisson of sensation through Jeongin’s entire body, like a wake-up call, like a reminder: something is about to happen. Be alert. “I think it’s pretty self-explanatory,” Minho says. “Jeongin-ah. Can I kiss you?”

Open season, Jeongin thinks. Yeah, okay. He says, quietly, carefully, “yes, hyung.” And Minho takes that and runs with it.

Between one blink and the next, Minho’s mouth ends up on his, bodies pressing together firmly. Minho is bulkier, stronger, than Felix or Seungmin, his shoulders wider than Jeongin’s own by a small amount. It feels miles wide like this, when Minho pushes him back against the wall and kisses him firmly, insistently, lips and teeth and the space between them, biting into Jeongin’s mouth. 

“Hyung –”

Minho kisses the words out of his mouth. His hands are greedy, one on Jeongin’s waist, nails digging into the soft flesh there, and one on the back of his neck, holding him in place. He pulls back minimally, and Jeongin feels himself chasing after him until Minho laughs. “Don’t talk, maknae-yah. Let me kiss you, okay?”

“If this is your approach to –” Jeongin tries, arch, and Minho’s lips are pressed back to his in the next moment. If this is your approach to everything, no wonder all of you are so – Whatever. Jeongin is pressed against a wall by a beautiful man and he is not going to complain about it more than is absolutely necessary. He steadies himself with one hand against the wall, then cringes when he feels cool glass – the mirror, of course. Fuck. But Minho kisses him with a fervour that’s difficult to deny, lips parted and searching, and the hand on Jeongin’s waist curves around to cup his ass because of fucking course it does, and – and Jeongin shudders, heady with desire, abruptly kissed stupid. There are a lot of reasons he should pull back. Not wanting this isn’t one of them.

Minho’s teeth graze Jeongin’s lower lip and Jeongin sighs into the kiss, melts into it. He thinks, a bit mean, that Minho probably likes his men a little useless. There’s no other way about it, anyway. Jeongin’s knees feel weak. His higher brain function has left the building. Minho murmurs against his lips, “how fast do you think I can make you come?” and Jeongin really might just pass out.

His mouth moves, trailing over Jeongin’s jaw, down his throat, the dip of his collar and the meat of his shoulders. Minho’s teeth graze over his flesh, teasing, not quite sharp enough to bite but enough that it makes Jeongin burn with want. He thought they weren’t meant to leave marks, but Minho has always marched to the beat of his own drum.

“I – I don’t know,” Jeongin manages, feeling Minho’s teeth smile against his jugular. “As fast as you want.”

“Will you be able to dance afterwards?” Minho asks, and then actually bites down into his neck gently, sucking lightly. Jeongin feels his heartrate jump and stutter.

“Mm – I don’t – I don’t care.”

Minho draws back and blinks at him, offended. “I’m running practice. You could at least sound like you care about it, Iyennie.” His fingers press into the flesh of Jeongin’s ass; Jeongin makes an embarrassing noise about it, and Minho laughs. Hesitates, for a moment, as if he’s searching Jeongin’s face for something. Then: “Already too stupid to care, our Jeonginnie? You just want to get off so bad that nothing else registers?”

Christ. Jeongin hates that he’s into it; hates that he’s been read for filth. Even that is its own sort of humiliation. “You’re,” he tries, and then winces at how breathy his own voice comes out; he sounds needy, desperate. It’s ridiculous. He’s been kissed for two minutes by his hyung and he can barely string words together. Minho’s thumb grazes over Jeongin’s hipbone, lightly possessive. Jeongin says helplessly, “I feel like I should be offended.”

Minho laughs again. His other hand trails around to the front of his neck, brushing over his throat, down his chest, catching on the collar of his t-shirt to tug at it. “Don’t try too hard. Let me do all the thinking.” Minho scrapes his nails down Jeongin’s sternum, over his stomach until his abs flutter and twitch, down to the waistband of his pants. “You want me to touch you, Jeonginnie? Like this, in our practice room, where anyone could walk in?”

Minho locked the door, Jeongin manages to remind himself. Right? Right. He watched him do it. But –

“You’d have to be quiet,” Minho keeps talking, dipping fingers into the waistband of Jeongin’s pants. “You know these rooms aren’t fully soundproof.”

Not fully, but enough. “How – how loud do you think I’m going to be?”

“Hm.” Minho’s fingers skim down the crease of Jeongin’s hip beneath his pants, neatly avoiding his dick, just drawing his attention through the brush of skin against skin. Fuck. That’s – it should be embarrassing, that Jeongin’s already half-hard, heat pooling heavy in his gut, except that Minho seems nothing but pleased. Endeared, almost. A little condescending, but affectionately so, like he would have expected nothing else. Jeongin shivers. “We’ll find out,” Minho says conversationally, then attaches his mouth to Jeongin’s neck again, which shouldn’t be hot. Shouldn’t be – Jeongin’s knees genuinely almost give out on him for a second, and Minho huffs a surprised laugh against his collarbone.

“Sorry,” Jeongin blurts, humiliated.

“Aw, Iyennie.” Minho’s tone is full of false worry. “You want to sit down?”

Jeongin doesn’t quite get a chance to answer before Minho is already lowering them both to the ground, situating himself on his knees and Jeongin in between his thighs. Like this, Jeongin can see the image they make together, their reflection in the mirror. Minho’s legs spread around his, Minho’s hands over his body. There is a faintly blooming mark on his neck already, pale enough that it’ll probably disappear before the others even get here. But the thought still makes something hot and liquid drip through him. Minho meets his eyes in the mirror and snakes his fingertips over Jeongin’s body, painfully slowly.

There are no clocks in the practice room. Jeongin can’t get to his phone, or check Minho’s watch. He’s – not impatient. He’s just concerned about the time. “Aren’t you going to – touch me?”

“I am touching you,” Minho says. As he speaks, he catches one finger in the collar of Jeongin’s shirt again, dragging it down until his chest is revealed. Minho grins, delighted, snake-like. “Why? Are you getting impatient, Jeonginnie? You’re worried the others will get here? I told you, don’t think so hard. Sluts like you don’t need to think so hard, hm?”

Jeongin cringes at his own reaction to that: the visible flush creeping from his throat and downwards, the way his hips jerk a little. Fucking Christ. “Did –” He hates the mirror and can’t look away from it: the way his lips form the words a little too clumsily, the way Minho’s hand skims over the bulge of his thigh. Minho meets his eyes in the mirror, amused. Fuck. “Did you – I feel like you shouldn’t just go around calling people sluts unprompted,” he manages, and feels proud of himself for all of two seconds before Minho is sliding a hand back into his pants and groping his ass, in a way that’s transparently just for Minho’s benefit. Like he’s just there to be touched however Minho wants. He sees himself tremble in the mirror; is glad, despite himself, that he’s on the ground now.

“I don’t just go around calling people sluts,” Minho says. His smile is feline. “Only the ones who like it, Jeonginnie. Hyung promises.” His chest presses against Jeongin’s back, steady and warm. In the mirror, Jeongin’s boner is humiliatingly obvious. If anyone walked in, they could – it’d only take a glance, and they’d – Minho drags a hand up Jeongin’s torso, indulgent, and adds, “I don’t see you complaining.”

Well, he’s not. Just. For posterity. “I’m – I’m not.” Part of him thinks Minho could call him anything he liked, as long as he’d touch him. He’s so hard, enough that he feels almost embarrassed about it. At least, he would if he couldn’t feel Minho’s own dick against his back, equally turned on. 

“No?” Minho asks. “You want me to call you that again?”

Yes. Yes. Jeongin doesn’t really want to say it aloud. He writhes in Minho’s grip, pressing his ass back against Minho’s crotch. He wants Minho to touch him. 

But Minho remains steadfast. “A good boy would ask for what he wants, Ayennie.”

God, it’s like someone’s written Minho a handbook on every single thing Jeongin could possibly be into. His head spins. He feels barely able to form words, let alone a full sentence. He should not be this unspooled by the half-promise of a handjob in the practice room on company time, and – and yet. Maybe should matters less, here, with Minho. Who knows Jeongin. Who Jeongin trusts. The door is locked; maybe it’s enough, then, just to want something, and to ask to have it.

Arousal crawls up Jeongin’s spine, shaped like embarrassment. “I – I want you to touch me, hyung,” he says, because that seems like safe ground. He swallows, can almost hear the retort, adds, “My – my cock. I want you to get me off. Please.”

“Aw,” Minho says. He hooks his chin over Jeongin’s shoulder, tilts his head into Jeongin’s, smiling goofily; then his expression sharpens, the silliness sloughing off until something more saccharine is sitting in its place, wearing the same smile but meaning it less. “Not what I asked, baby. Try again.”

What – Jeongin inhales, feeling like he could just about fall apart. He squeezes his eyes shut, hardly able to look at himself. He knows his cheeks are red, knows his body is stretched taut, knows how he looks right now. Turned on, desperate, like a – like a –

“Hyung, please,” he tries, spreading his knees further, as far as he can between Minho’s. He arches his back a little too, feels the pressure of Minho’s own cock against his ass, the firmness of his chest, the muscle in his arms. “Hyung.”

“Jeongin,” Minho just says, firmly. Waiting. He’s watching, in the mirror, Jeongin can tell even if he isn’t looking himself. Can feel the weight of Minho’s eyes.

“I want –” God, this is insane, “I want you to touch me, and. And call me a slut. And touch me. Hyung. Please.”

He can barely form the words, can barely get them in a sentence. He opens his eyes briefly, mostly to watch the way Minho’s grin spreads up his face, slick and satisfied, and then tips his head back against Minho’s shoulder, unable to look any longer. Jesus Christ. Jesus. He doesn’t and does feel like himself: thoughts scattered, but oddly and deliciously centred in his body, his flesh easier to inhabit than his mind. Like this: Minho’s body against him. The soft cloth of his shirt. The low croon of his voice, registering more as sensation than as language.

“Jeonginnie,” Minho murmurs. Jeongin squirms against him. “Iyen-ah. You with me?”

“No,” Jeongin says petulantly. He lifts a hand to cover his face; Minho catches his wrist mid-movement and tugs it back to his side. “Ugh, hyung. ” 

“Don’t you want to see how cute you are?” Minho says, his tone curling at the edges, almost dangerous. Jeongin blinks haphazardly at the mirror. There’s an embarrassing sweaty handprint on it at his eyeline, from before, when Minho had been kissing him pressed against it; Jeongin really hopes there are wet wipes or something in the studio. Minho tilts his head into Jeongin’s, blinking at him in the mirror. Says, “There you are. C’mon, Jeonginnie, keep watching for hyung.”

He can. He can do that. Even when it threatens to overwhelm him, stokes the fire in the bottom of his stomach, red hot embers, sparks jumping up. Jeongin keeps watching. Mostly watching Minho: Minho’s hands, climbing up and down his body, greedy, relentless as they dip into his shirt, pulling it away from his body, and into his pants, skimming over his thighs. Minho’s legs, too, positioned either side of Jeongin’s own, muscles flexing in a way that makes Jeongin’s mouth water. And his eyes, his face, his lips, pressed into the curve of Jeongin’s shoulder, gaze dripping down his body like water.

Minho lifts Jeongin’s shirt again. A little more purposeful, lifts it up further until he can pull it all the way off. The air conditioner is on. Goosebumps rise on Jeongin’s skin everywhere that Minho touches him. Minho scrapes the edge of his nail over one of Jeongin’s nipples, cruel and teasing, and Jeongin can’t help the way he arches back into it, pressing his body into Minho’s hands any way he can. 

“Hm,” Minho says, gleeful. “Kim Seungmin didn’t lie to me. That’s a nice change of pace.”

Gooseflesh sweeps its way across Jeongin’s chest all of its own accord, now; something hot curls in his gut that might be frustration or arousal. Everywhere he looks, the seven of them are knotted together. He’s already tangled in with them in every way that matters; why shouldn’t it be the same in this? “Seungmin-hyung,” Jeongin says, frustrated, “should learn to keep things to himself.” It’s hard to keep his tone arch when Minho skims a hand over Jeongin’s stomach and ghosts a thumb under his waistband again, dragging a breathy sound from his throat. “Hyung, please. How long –?”

“I thought I told you not to worry about it,” Minho says. He grips Jeongin’s chin in one hand and holds it in place. “It’s okay, Iyennie. Hyung doesn’t mind if you’re a bit of a slut as long as you do as you’re told.”

“I just want you to touch me ,” Jeongin chokes out, forcing the words between his lips. Minho’s fingers dig into the soft flesh of his cheek, making him look. His hips twitch of their own accord, thrusting as far as he can into the empty space beyond him, limited by Minho’s own body. It makes him laugh, and something thick and heavy trickles through Jeongin. “Please, hyung, please –”

Minho bites his teeth into Jeongin’s shoulder again, and then finally, finally, skims his hands over Jeongin’s dick, over his clothes. “You’re thinking about the others a lot, hm? When I’m the only one here right now.”

Jeongin arches up into his touch again. “Maybe if you actually touched me –”

Minho just laughs again, dark and delighted. “It’s okay, Ayen-ah. You can admit it. You want them to walk in, hm? You want them to come in and see you like this, on your knees for hyung, just like a whore.” He shoves his hand into Jeongin’s pants, brushing over his cock, light enough that Jeongin whines and shudders and watches himself shudder in the mirror, and tosses his head back on Minho’s shoulder. “You think they’d all stay to watch, baby? They would if you asked them, you know.”

Jeongin grits his teeth, says, “I am going to kill Seungmin-hyung.”

Minho tilts his head, catches Jeongin’s eye. Something glitters dark in his gaze. He presses down more firmly onto Jeongin’s cock, under his pants but still clothed in his briefs; the sudden pressure is so dizzying Jeongin makes a shaky breathless sound, undone. Pleasure winds its way all the way up his spine, unsated but tasting like a promise. 

“Cute,” Minho says. He presses a sloppy kiss to Jeongin’s cheek, the hand on his chin squishing his lips together like they all do when they’re treating him like a baby, so cute, maknae-yah, so sweet; Jeongin feels comprised entirely of crossed wires, conflicting inputs, of sparks. “Seungminnie was so helpful, though. And I don’t remember asking for smart comments, Jeonginnie, even if you think you’re funny.”

Something spits and sparks in his gut. “Well, you haven’t done what I’m asking for,” Jeongin says, before he can think better of it, “so why would I do what you want?”

Minho’s face twitches in the mirror. Jeongin is so turned on he thinks he might die, he could die here, between Minho’s thighs. “I’ve been touching you this entire time,” Minho reminds him, carefully, patiently. “I could stop. I could leave you all worked up and you’d have to go through practice knowing what exactly you’re missing out on. I doubt you’d be able to hide it, either, so everyone would know. Look at yourself, Jeonginnie.”

“I don’t –”

“Look at yourself,” Minho repeats firmly. Jeongin drags in a breath, feeling like none of the oxygen reaches his lungs, and looks at himself.

He looks torn apart. His cheeks are flushed and red, eyes wide and glassy, lips plump and bitten. His hair is messy, and he’s not even sure when that happened. The faint pink marks from Minho’s teeth trail all over the breadth of his shoulders, not enough to be noticeable until Jeongin tries to find them. His legs are still spread, but now Minho isn’t even trying to keep them apart for him. He’s just… sitting there. On display. 

The noise boils up from nothing, like flash-flood of need: one moment the riverbed is bone-dry, and the next, Jeongin is whining out loud, cringing in on himself even as he hears it. Sees it. Minho, behind him, offers him a smile in the mirror comprised mostly of teeth and brushes his thumb over the clothed head of Jeongin’s cock, and then, when Jeongin goes to squeeze his eyes shut, adds, “No. Watch.” 

His fingers ghost over Jeongin’s shaft through his briefs. Jeongin is in a practice room in the company building. He’s at work, and he looks – undone, wanton, and somehow, most humiliatingly, still like himself. Not unrecognisable at all. He’d thought desire might change him, that the version of Jeongin who was allowed to want would be someone new, someone poised, slutty, pornographic maybe; instead, it’s still just him in the mirror with his hyung’s hand down his pants. Still his own eyes creased in pleasure, and his abs half-visible beneath the soft hydrated swell of his belly, and the same skin he’d scrubbed in the shower that morning wearing tooth-marks and messy with spit, and still just Minho, wearing a baggy shirt with his hair all fluffy and mussed. He’s seen Minho wear each part of this expression before: the intent dark focus in his eyes, the wrinkle to his brow, the half-smirk crescent of his lips. The only thing that’s changed is that he wants Jeongin, too.

Or maybe not even that. Maybe just that he’s finally letting himself have something he wants, too.

“Minho-hyung,” Jeongin breathes. He’s shaking, possibly. Trembling. Minho keeps firm hold of him, grounding and solid. Something in him seems to fracture, splintering across his face. His poise, maybe, or his tenacity. Like Minho is getting impatient too. 

“You want this so badly,” Minho says, not even asking, stating the obvious. Threads of arousal twist through his words, though, unravelling spools of want and desire, tangling Jeongin up in them all. And then, like that, Minho tugs Jeongin’s sweatpants as far down his thighs as he can, shoves his underwear down after them. The sudden cold air makes Jeongin keen, makes him twist and jolt in Minho’s arms, more sensitive than he’d expected to be. Well, Minho’s been teasing him for a while. Jeongin’s been horny for even longer. His reaction makes Minho smirk though, makes Jeongin feel… exposed, maybe, sitting in Minho’s arms, fairly naked, while Minho remains clothed. Slutty, a little, and exposed and greedy. Like he can’t help but have this. Need it.

His cock bobs against his stomach, flushed, bare. Minho is a steady weight against him. Murmurs, abruptly tender, too quiet and sweet for the practice room under the fluorescent lights, “Jeongin-ah. Still with me?” His legs bracket Jeongin’s hips. It’s strange to be flayed so raw in such an almost-public setting, to be unmade here, and yet feel so safe; Minho smooths a hand over Jeongin’s bare thigh, toying with the hair along his quads he doesn’t get waxed, unjudgmental. Jeongin shivers under his touch, and Minho laughs. “Yes?”

“Yeah,” Jeongin murmurs, squirming in place a little in an effort to work Minho’s hand closer to his cock. He knows better than to reach for it himself, he thinks. Settles his hands on Minho’s legs and tries to steady himself. “Please, hyung.” He’s going to do this, he thinks, and – and he won’t be different when he wakes up tomorrow. The version of him that is here is the version that gets to have this. The Jeongin that woke up this morning is the Jeongin who’s letting his hyung jerk him off against a mirror in a dance studio, is the version who wants and is wanted, is the version with his legs spread and a flush dragged all the way down his chest. Jeongin shudders. “Please. ”

Minho relents, gives in, wraps his hand around Jeongin’s dick with a gentleness that belies his words. His palm is warm and dry, fingers soft and curious, and he strokes along Jeongin’s length slowly. Teasing, again, but Jeongin just lets himself sink into the touch. He exhales softly, something that could be a moan, caught in the back of his throat. It feels good, anyway, and Jeongin watches the movement of Minho’s hand in the mirror, watches his own body come apart under Minho’s touch, unable to look away anymore.

“Good,” Minho murmurs, lips, teeth, against the tender skin of his neck, “good boy, Jeonginnie. Keep watching, hm? Look at how much you need this. How good you look like this.”

Jeongin’s hips buck into Minho’s touch, jolting forward. Minho rolls with the movement, and then reels him back in, holding him steady and keeping his pace. Jeongin feels like his brain is leaking out his ears. Desire coils like a live wire in his gut, like monsoon shadows on the horizon. “Hyung, ” he manages, then, flushing, “Don’t laugh at me, but –”

“I know, Jeonginnie.” Minho presses the words into his throat, sounding vaguely amused. Condescending. “It’s okay. Helpful, really, given the time limit.” The next drag of his hand along Jeongin’s dick is wetter, slicker, and Jeongin feels embarrassment reel within him when he realises it’s his precome. His stomach feels like the rolling belly of a thundercloud, swollen with raindrops, flushed dark with desire and ready to burst. Humiliation, then, is the corresponding crawl of humidity on his skin. The mirror is steamy with his breath. Minho’s hand is smaller than Jeongin’s and it makes his dick look bigger in comparison, which is – a stupid thing to notice, maybe, but all keyed-up like this, even the little things slam into him like punches. He drags in as slow a breath as he can manage.

Jeongin bites through the sticky swell of embarrassment and makes himself say it, and the world doesn’t end: “Hyung, I’m close, I’m really – fuck. ” He drops his head back into Minho’s shoulder, and Minho hums, guides his skull back upright, forces him to look. 

God. God, okay. Minho’s hand speeds up a little, gets a little tighter, twisting over the head of his cock and working over the shaft with practiced ease. Like he’s touched Jeongin before, thought about touching him before. Like he knows how Jeongin ticks, all the things that build him and break him down and dig fingers into his flesh to tear him apart. 

“Hyung, I’m going to –”

“You can come, Jeonginnie,” Minho says softly, “you can come whenever you want. You’ve done so well for hyung, baby. Watch yourself come, okay? Watch yourself come all over yourself, all slutty and cute for me.”

Minho bites into his shoulder again, a little harder, lower down, far enough to be hidden by the sleeves of his shirts, and jerks him off steadily. His mouth suctions around Jeongin’s flesh, and Jeongin feels his whole body twitch like a live wire, electricity licking along his spine. He comes like that, Minho’s teeth in his flesh, Minho’s hand on his dick, and his orgasm hits him like a train. His come spurts up his own chest, dripping between his pecs, over Minho’s hand. Jeongin makes a noise, feels like he can’t quite catch his breath, like his vision is closing in as all his veins, all his capillaries and blood vessels contract and release at once until he slumps in Minho’s arms, spent. 

“Hm,” Minho says, and pats him gently on the thigh, amicable. “How’s that?”

Jeongin blinks at him, head fuzzy. Thank Christ he didn’t get come on the mirror. “Holy shit, hyung,” he says, and then, wincing, “I’m. Uh. God, are there tissues in here?”

“I don’t think tissues would save your pants,” Minho says, amused. Jeongin glances down and grimaces; they’re bunched awkwardly around his ankles, dirtied. “Relax, Jeonginnie. Feeling better?”

“What time is it, ” Jeongin says, fervent, alarmed. He tries to scramble to his feet, feels a little weak-kneed like a newborn fawn, and Minho snorts and tugs him back into his chest, hooking his chin over his shoulder again. “Hyung, seriously!”

“Relax,” Minho repeats. He doesn’t even bother to check the time. “I, um. I told the others to come later. It’s just us for now.”

Jeongin finds himself curling back into Minho’s embrace, tension leaking out of him despite himself. “What?”

He glances in the mirror again. Everything seems a little different now, faded around the edges, fuzzy. They’re still in the practice room, but it doesn’t quite feel like it. Minho’s face is red, eyes turned away. He’s biting his lip, in a way that makes an echo of arousal kick up in Jeongin’s stomach, something that could have been. 

Minho sighs. His breath ghosts over Jeongin’s shoulder, his still bare chest, the shell of his ear. “I told them to come later. They won’t be here for a while. You don’t need to worry.”

Jeongin opens his mouth. Stops. Closes it again. “Oh my God, hyung.” He pauses. “When did you even –?”

“Yang Jeongin-ah,” Minho says, voice taut in something that could be reprimand or embarrassment. “Don’t worry about it. Um. I have – spare pants in my bag, if you want.”

Of fucking course. Jeongin presses closer into Minho’s hold, grouches, “You fucking planned this.” He’s not really sure how he should feel about it and – sort of doesn’t care, actually, because a little part of him is preening in his stomach, gleeful at the thought that Minho wanted him long enough to think about it, wanted him in his own dorm, wanted him through changes of setting and steadily enough to plan around it. Still. “All of you are horrible people,” he grumbles.

“I’m holding you in my arms right now,” Minho says, like he’s trying really hard to deadpan but can’t stop the fondness creeping in.

“Against my will,” Jeongin says, going limp. Minho’s chest vibrates against him as he laughs. Jeongin tilts his head up a little to nose at Minho’s jaw, kissing along it until he catches sight of his shoulder in the mirror. There’s a red, angry welt on the meat of his shoulder, bruising easily. Jeongin can’t quite find it in himself to regret it. He does say, “I thought you weren’t supposed to leave marks,” though, and watches Minho’s eyes – and then his fingers, curious and mean, digging into the bruise – drop to the hickey immediately.

Minho hums. “Oops.”

Jeongin groans, slumping back into Minho’s arms. It’s in an easy enough place to hide, but not so easy that there’s no chance anyone will see it at all. “This is the worst.”

“Tell me that again when you don’t have your own come drying in your pants,” Minho says, frankly. Jeongin is promptly reminded about the come drying on him, cold and sticky, and recoils. Minho snickers. “Front pocket of my bag.”

“You broke me and now you won’t even clean me up,” Jeongin says, affronted, but this time, when he wobbles to his feet, Minho lets him go. His pants pool around his ankles, and he winces, tries to decide whether it would be worse to walk over to Minho’s bag with his dick out or to pull up his gross pants and settles on the former; Minho reaches up and gropes his bare ass appreciatively, and Jeongin shrieks, hurtles out of reach as quickly as he can, fumbles in Minho’s bag and finds – wet wipes, and also what are definitely his own pants. Like, Jeongin’s, that he bought. “Hyung, why do you have my favourite practice sweats,” he demands, because he has truly been trying to work out where these went for, like, days.

Minho shrugs. “I’m at your apartment a lot.”

“You would have had to have gone through our – laundry, or something,” Jeongin counters. There’s a fifty-fifty chance Minho will admit to this, regardless of whether they both know it’s true.

Minho just shrugs again, like, so what . “They must have got mixed up with Chan’s,” he says, like it’s the truth, like this is feasible in the first place, and doesn’t just generate more questions. Jeongin doesn’t even bother asking why Minho was doing Chan’s laundry to start with. 

“So you took them,” Jeongin says. He doesn’t want to complain too much, since he’s now able to fully strip out of his dirtied clothes and replace them with clean ones, after wiping away as much as he can. “Just admit it, hyung. How long have you been planning this for?”

“You’ll never know,” Minho says, lip curling. 

Jeongin scoffs. “Yeah, that’s starting to become a pattern,” he snipes, before he can think better of it, and then winces. “Uh. Sorry.”

“Iyennie,” Minho says, frowning. He drags himself to his feet with fewer joint clicks than usual and comes over to plaster himself to Jeongin’s back, shoulders to hips, his arms coming up to settle around Jeongin’s middle. “What? Why are you bitchier than usual?”

Jeongin squirms in his grip. “What, you don’t know? I thought you and Jisung told each other everything.”

Minho frowns. At least, Jeongin assumes so, because his whole body goes sort of tense and releases again, the same way his forehead creases and then smooths back out. “What does Jisung have to do with this?”

What doesn’t Jisung have to do with it, Jeongin thinks and doesn’t say. What don’t any of them have to do with it, all of them intimately involved by now. All these lines in the sand, each one of them scuffed over. He just sighs, leaning back against Minho. “He just… confused me. All of you have.”

Minho’s grip tightens briefly. “That wasn’t… our intention.”

“It didn’t have to be,” Jeongin says. “Just. How could it not be? I don’t know what any of you want, except that you want me. But in what capacity? And none of you will let yourselves have it in the first place.”

Minho is silent for a long moment, but his fingers flex over Jeongin’s waist, almost self-soothing. Considering. Jeongin is vividly reminded of how Minho had looked, earlier, at the concept that Jeongin might want to talk about his feelings, and manages to keep his wince internal rather than letting it show on his face. “Iyennie,” Minho says, tentative, careful. “It’s – complicated.”

Jeongin scowls. “I know it’s fucking complicated. That doesn’t make it less of a cop-out.” 

“No, Jeongin-ah, listen to me,” Minho says. They’re facing the only wall without a mirror on it, so Jeongin can’t see Minho’s expression; his tone is more serious than it usually gets, settles guilty and uncomfortable in Jeongin’s bones. “Listen. It’s not like the rest of us have it magically figured out, okay? We are all in a – None of us are used to getting what we want. We can’t. You’re acting like the rest of us are in some perfectly negotiated polycule and we made a conscious decision to leave you out of it.”

Jeongin feels flayed-raw, small, and cringes away from Minho’s touch. “I never said that.”

“No?” Minho swallows. “You know Chan yelled at me for two hours the first time Jisung and I had sex?”

“Then maybe Chan has a problem –”

“Chan worries, ” Minho bites out, intent. “And he’s probably right to. We’re just making bad decisions because it’s – fuck, Iyennie, it’s like cutting our losses. Having what we can. Don’t talk to me about confusing unless you’re willing to accept the rest of us are confused too, okay?”

Jeongin falters. His words taste rotten, soured, on the back of his tongue. “That’s not what I meant –”

Minho presses his forehead to Jeongin’s shoulder, digging his nose into Jeongin’s shoulder blade. “Jeongin-ah, I’m sorry we’ve hurt you. You’re right, we could have gone about this in a different way. But – please, just – this isn’t painless for the rest of us, either.”

Part of Jeongin rears its head, sharp, defensive. Something with teeth and claws and anger. Part of him, the young part, wants to believe that if something could be that bad, it was their job to protect him from it. That if they’d known it would hurt, they shouldn’t have started anything they couldn’t finish. Some part of him, dark and bitter, keeping a tight lid on it before it spills out all over the place.

Minho pushes his nose into Jeongin’s shoulder again. “Yah. I can already tell what you’re thinking, too. I’m not saying this to hurt you, or blame you, or make you defend yourself. We’ve all made mistakes, okay?” He swallows again. “Just. Maybe give everyone some grace. Jisungie has been having a difficult time; I think Chan-hyung’s guilt complex might be contagious.” Minho pulls away a little, and Jeongin hears him take a long, carefully measured breath. “All right, I’ve said my piece. Shutting up now and potentially forever.”

“Finally some peace and quiet,” Jeongin jokes on autopilot. He toys with the drawstring of his own favourite sweatpants and thinks about being loved and bites the inside of his own cheek, painfully conscious of the mirrors at his back. Thankfully, his shirt collar just obscures the hickey. We’re just making bad decisions. He thinks, for a moment, what it would mean for someone to see it on him, and vertigo shudders through the plane of his body with such force it makes him nauseous until he forcibly steps back from that ledge. Fuck. Puts that thought in a box to think about never.

The wanting didn’t ruin him. The having might.

Minho sighs, physical enough that it moves Jeongin’s body with it. He doesn’t say anything else though, just lingers, world-weary, pressed against Jeongin’s back. Jeongin takes stock of himself: he feels, well. Okay, mostly. The lingering arousal has worn off, and his head has cleared from his orgasm. Half of him wants to curl up and nap, but the other half is fully aware of the dance practice he’s about to do. He feels like this day has lasted forever, and it’s not even lunchtime.

He takes stock of Minho, too, feels his body slowly losing all its tension, like he just had a really good warm up. And of the room, the mirrors, the floor. There’s no evidence of their… God, Jeongin doesn’t even know what word to use for it all anymore. Nothing quite fits. The only sign that something has gone on is Jeongin’s hair, sex mussed in a way he can’t quite bring himself to fix, and the hickey obscured by his shirt. If he focuses, he can hear faint footsteps outside the door, people going to and fro from their own practices, the bustle of the company building. Normally, the knowledge that he isn’t alone here is comforting. 

He thinks he left normal behind about four days ago. 

“Hyung,” he says, because it’s always been enough before, and – hesitates. The flood doesn’t quite translate into words just yet, only claws its way up his throat. He doesn’t know what to say. “I’m. Thank you.” He searches for a peace offering. “Do you want coffee or something? I could go down to the cafeteria and fetch us drinks.” In what capacity, he’d asked Minho, and the formlessness of it weighs heavily on him, but he thinks he can start to unpick it: like this. Like here is how you always take care of me; let me take care of you just the same. Just this once. Like the fact that Minho is always the one to duck downstairs to the company canteen. Minho’s eyes linger on Jeongin, appraising, before a slow smile curves feline over his lips.

“Just stay here, Jeonginnie,” he says. His lips quirk, amused. “With your hair like that, anyway. They can fetch their own drinks for once.” So there’s something he isn’t saying, too: I’ll stay here with you. Jeongin feels the weight of the city sprawling behind him, above him, millions of faces and none of them knowing him, and feels very glad to have Minho close.

He jumps when the door clicks. “Minho-yah,” comes Chan’s voice, disgruntled. “Unlock the door, yeah?”

Minho’s face twitches. He waits a second before he lets go of Jeongin, like he’s waiting for Jeongin to – to what? Reject Chan? Open the door himself? Jeongin just waits, and Minho lets him go, stepping back. Jeongin listens to the lock clicking, the creak of the hinges and then Chan’s footsteps, the rustle of his clothes, the intake of his breath.

“Oh,” Chan says. Jeongin feels, abruptly, like he’s been caught doing something he shouldn’t have been. “Jeongin-ah. You’re… early?”

Well, early. Sure, he’s early. He turns around to meet Chan’s eyes, to watch the way Chan looks him up and down, cataloguing. And then the way Chan’s gaze flicks to Minho, darts around the room, and then back to Minho. Jeongin flounders. “Um. Yeah. Hyung.”

An expression flickers briefly across Chan’s face that Jeongin’s never seen before, the barest tension behind his eyes, an odd set to his lips; then Chan says, very neutrally, voice very even, “Minho-yah, there’s a handprint on the mirror.” Like Jeongin isn’t even there. Chan’s eyes flick to Jeongin’s for a brief, blistering moment, the contact burning and almost – what? Imploring? Beseeching? Fear, Jeongin realises a second later, is the expression he’s never seen Chan wear before – and then Chan scrubs a hand over his face, and the half-set concealer smudges from its little crescents beneath his eyes, and says, “Just – be careful. Would it kill you to be careful.” Almost like he’s begging. Jeongin feels chastised and pinned, almost rises to the bait and snaps something uncharitable in response – but Chan just takes another deep breath and turns and leaves again. Shuts the door behind him. The silence in his wake feels very thick.

“That could’ve gone better,” Minho says crisply.

Jeongin inhales. There is a handprint on the mirror, but it’s not that noticeable. Not that implicative, either. He feels a little put out by it all, that Chan can just assume these things about him but he can’t confront them directly. It’s not like there’s never been a handprint smudged on their mirrors before. “He’ll come back,” Jeongin says, half asking and half stating. Minho answers him anyway.

“Of course he will,” he says, “he won’t miss practice. He’s just being stupid about all of this.”

“We should have been more careful,” Jeongin says, though. Maybe Chan had been right. Minho had said it, too, that Chan worries about all of this, and he’s right to worry. Someone has to. Chan shoulders that burden for them. Chan shoulders a lot of things for them. “We should have…”

“We were careful,” Minho says, like he’s trying to be reassuring. “He knows that, too. Hyung is just being stupid, Innie. Don’t worry, okay? He’ll get over it soon. He just needs some time, as well.”

Jeongin sighs. Right. They’ll all just get over it soon and everything will be fine. 

“Hyung,” he says, instead of something bitchy and generally unhelpful, no matter that it sits behind his teeth and turns his whole mouth sour. “Which choreos are we doing today?”

Minho eyes him balefully across the room. “You’ll find out when everyone gets here, brat.” Jeongin blinks at him. It’s all right; he can count, on one hand, the seconds until Minho caves in and tells him.

It doesn’t take long, anyway; a few minutes later, after Jeongin has finger-combed his hair as flat as it will go, Seungmin and Felix show up, and about a minute after that Chan walks stiffly back in as though he was just waiting for someone else to get there first. No one calls  him out on it. No one calls him out on the awkward way he doesn’t greet Jeongin or Minho, either, even though Felix hugs them both like he hasn’t seen them in days, and Seungmin brushes his shoulder against Jeongin’s in a way that seems casual but could be anything but. 

“Where’s everyone else?” Minho asks, while Chan drifts over to the corner of the room to start stretching. Jeongin watches him; thinks about joining, but doesn’t. He joins Felix and Seungmin instead.

“Hyunjin’s getting coffee,” Seungmin says. “I haven’t seen anyone else yet. Shouldn’t you know where your roommate is?”

There’s some undercurrent to Seungmin’s words, some veiled jab, that makes Minho look at him witheringly and not bother to rise to the bait. “If they’re not here in five minutes, we’ll get started without them.”

“No you won’t,” Jeongin says automatically. Felix snickers. Across the room, Chan’s lip twitches in something that might almost be a smile, and Jeongin hates the way his own chest blossoms warm and fond in response, relieved, the way he’s just the same amount of desperate for Chan to like him as he was when he was sixteen years old. The door slides open again and Jeongin drags his eyes away from Chan, offers Changbin a sort of half-smile that’s the best he can do. In Changbin’s periphery, at his shoulder, hovers Hyunjin, who avoids Jeongin’s eyes for all of two seconds before flinching and then meeting Jeongin’s eye with a watery, timid smile.

It’s – not angry, anyway. Jeongin can feel Minho’s eyes lingering on him without even looking, thinks about the rest of us are confused too, thinks about none of us are used to getting what we want. Thinks about Hyunjin’s lips around him, mostly because Hyunjin’s lips are right there and Jeongin is just a man. He smiles back at Hyunjin, though, feeling a little fragile; something melts in his chest at the naked relief that blossoms across Hyunjin’s eyes in response.

“There’s a lot of talking happening when there should be warming up happening,” Minho says, neutrally, in the way that makes it clear he doesn’t actually care but he wants everyone to act like he does. Everyone laughs about it, too, but they all do as they’re told. Jeongin keeps helping Seungmin and Felix, puts his hands on Felix’s ankles to keep his legs in place while he stretches, and then lets Seungmin press down on his back, until Jeongin’s nose touches the floor.

Like normal. It’s nice, having them touch him again like this. With no ulterior motive, or really any motive at all. Just hands, and bodies, and the tangible thing that connects them all in this room. Jeongin sits back up, letting Seungmin’s palms slide off his back like water. Across the room, Minho has Changbin fully standing on his knees while he does a butterfly stretch, which seemed alarming the first time Jeongin saw him request it and has since faded into only a background, low-level concern; Hyunjin is standing on Chan’s back and dragging a concerning amount of clicks free of his spine. Jeongin twists in place to release his spine, catching Felix’s eye as he turns, and there’s nothing but affection there.

He turns to the left; the door, a line of sports bags and duffels along the wall, someone’s hoodie, three different water bottles. And right, to the mirrors, to see the shapes they’re all making, this picture of them together. The door opens in the reflection, and Jisung slips in. Jeongin follows his reflection, tracks the way Jisung’s eyes flicker across all of them, like he’s trying to figure out the trend line but can’t. He dumps his stuff in the corner, and immediately goes to Minho.

Even as they move from stretching into a more dynamic warm-up, the other shoe doesn’t quite seem to drop. Jeongin keeps waiting for – something, he doesn’t know what, to go wrong; for someone to look at him with more fury than grace, or even just dripping with pity. Like he’s dirty. Like he’s done something he can’t take back. But the world doesn’t end, and even though Jisung doesn’t meet his eyes, he hands Jeongin a water bottle before Jeongin can ask, and even though Chan won’t quite get drawn into one-on-one conversation with him he’ll laugh at a joke Jeongin makes to the whole group, and it’s – almost normal. Almost okay.

Something loosens in Jeongin’s spine, like the crackling release of a good stretch, like unravelling a mistake to start again. He exhales for what feels like the first time in days. He doesn’t regret any of this. Whatever happens now.

Minho calls attention. It’s practically muscle memory now, to let him orchestrate dance practices, and it means Jeongin can let all of his thoughts slip a little more into the background, can focus on his movement and not much else. His body moves as commanded, carving out the space he occupies between everyone else. For a few hours, here, nothing else can touch him. 

No matter what, Jeongin thinks, he knows these men. Knew them when all of them were barely out of boyhood. He thinks he might almost get it, now: Hyunjin’s cold defensive laugh, and fear written in the knit to Chan’s brow, and Jisung’s coiled guilty frame. All of it born from too much love. Desire gone sour in the absence of safety. 

Jeongin dances. Coworkers, friends, yes; brothers – maybe not. Something else, too. Something he can't say out loud until his contract expires, and probably not for years after that if he signs again – and how could he not renew? Doing anything else would take them from each other. 

It boils down to the same in all of them, really: not wanting to be taken from each other. 

“Let's get lunch,” Felix suggests, when they’re all sweaty and sated, in the exercise afterglow that's always felt faintly post-coital to Jeongin. Chan laughs. “What?”

“It’s like four in the afternoon, Lix,” Jisung says. 

Felix bristles, not really meaning his offence except to make them all laugh. “And? Have any of you eaten lunch yet?”

“I did,” volunteers Changbin, prompting Hyunjin to groan loudly and slap his shoulder in a way that hides nothing. His hand lingers on Changbin’s bicep for longer than would be socially acceptable but – well, that’s all kind of fallen by the wayside these days.

“We should,” Jeongin says, and then feels his heart rate jump when they all turn to look at him. “We haven’t… haven’t eaten together for a while.”

Jisung squeals, scrunching his face up in the kind of aegyo that makes them all cringe. He makes grabby hands at Jeongin, too, like he’s trying to squish his cheeks together. “Ayennie wants to spend time with his hyungs, aigoo, so cute!”

“Don't start,” Jeongin says, wincing at the bite in his words but not quite sorry for it. Felix, bless him and his fucking nonexistent poxer face when it comes to all of them, grimaces, and Jisung – falters, something flickering over him without sound, like a storm far enough away that you can only see the lightning mute on the horizon. Jeongin lifts his chin, not quite able to bring himself to actually take it back, then adds, placating, “Let's just eat, Jisung-hyung. Let’s not – Let’s not.”

“Hyung will pay,” Minho says magnanimously. “By which I mean Channie-hyung.”

Chan makes a short noise of protest but doesn’t actually say anything. He gathers up his hoodie and water bottle from the pile near the door, and then picks up Jeongin’s to hand to him too. Like some kind of peace offering, although it’s nothing out of the ordinary. Jeongin takes his sweatshirt from Chan, blinks at him, and tries not to flinch when their fingertips brush. Like nothing out of the ordinary.

“Last one down to the cafeteria has to clean everyone’s bathrooms for a week,” Hyunjin challenges, just seconds before he dashes out of the door. He’s quickly followed by Seungmin, Jisung, and Felix. And Minho after that, who meets Jeongin’s eyes and then flicks his gaze to – Changbin? Jeongin frowns.

Chan leaves next, clearly trying not to rush, so he isn’t seen playing into their games, but also like he really doesn’t want to be last. But Changbin holds the door open for Jeongin, looking at him with – something in his eyes. 

“You go first,” Changbin says. He’s smiling, maybe, something soft and gentle. “You don’t wanna clean everyone’s bathrooms, huh, Ayen-ah?”

“If I was last,” Jeongin points out, “no one would enforce it.” 

Changbin’s grin, even as he laughs, is almost wistful. “Right. Maknae privileges, hm?” He reaches out to tug Jeongin close, and Jeongin lets himself be held, lets Changbin scrub a hand roughly through his hair. “Still, let’s not test it. Go on, Jeonginnie.” 

Jeongin swallows and ducks through the door; it feels like it carries more weight than it should. “Thanks, hyung,” he says. He doesn’t think it’s just for letting him leave first but can’t place what else he means, only feels it lingering beneath his sternum, pressed into the cage of his ribs. 

“Of course, Iyennie,” Changbin murmurs, and it’s not even overwrought aegyo. Only gentle, almost painfully so. 

He gets down to the company canteen seconds before Changbin does, and the table that the rest of them are sitting at erupt in a series of cheers that make everyone else in the room look over, and then promptly look away once they realise who it is. Jeongin can’t even let himself be embarrassed by it because it’s so normal . He didn’t realise how much he’d missed it – how intangible, ungrounded, the last few days have felt. It’s like he’s being bought back down to Earth. 

“Yah, Seo Changbin, you let the maknae win!” Seungmin accuses, which Changbin takes in stride, and just laughs and catches Seungmin in a headlock.

“Don’t be ridiculous, Seung-meong,” he says, tussling Seungmin about a little. It makes a familiar sort of heat rise in Seungmin’s face, one that Jeongin decides not to comment on. Instead he just sits at the edge of the table, and then Changbin lets go of Seungmin and comes to sit opposite him. Their feet knock together under the table. There’s no intent behind it, but Jeongin feels something unknit in his shoulders at the contact anyway.

At his left, Felix jostles their shoulders together. “Yang Jeongin,” he says, in the stupid gremlin voice, and then blinks at Jeongin like he hadn’t said anything at all. Jeongin rubs at the bridge of his nose. Someone slides a bowl of rice in front of him, and then someone else transfers a chunk of tuna to it before he even has the chance to pull it towards himself, and a third pair of chopsticks has cucumber; it’s objectively ridiculous how fast the bowl fills itself. Jeongin isn’t going to complain, though. 

He glances up at Hyunjin, who’s next to Changbin with his arm outstretched and blinks at Jeongin like he’s been caught doing something much worse than giving Jeongin some of his fried chicken; Jeongin offers him his silliest, tight-lipped grin because it always makes Hyunjin laugh, because he knows it does, and sure enough it drags a choked laugh from Hyunjin despite the wide-eyed, deer-in-headlights stare.

Jeongin pushes his bowl a little closer to Hyunjin, though, prompting him to deposit the chicken in it. His smile turns a little softer, more genuine, before he pulls his bowl back towards himself. Hyunjin relaxes too, so microscopically that it’s practically indistinguishable, but Jeongin sees the way his spine decompresses a little. Feels the way his own body relaxes a little in response.

Until someone takes the chopsticks from his bowl, picks up a mouthful and tries to feed it to him. Felix, grinning widely, like he’s doing it just because he knows it’ll annoy Jeongin. He does the voice again, scrunching his mouth up into an ugly smile. “You eat so well, Ayen-ah.”

“Yah, I can feed myself!” Jeongin takes his chopsticks back. The mouthful of food Felix had balanced on them goes flying across the table, grains of rice and tuna scattering everywhere. Minho, on Hyunjin’s other side, wrinkles his nose, but Jisung laughs so loudly it almost makes Jeongin wince, and then he and Felix are setting each other off, dissolving into giggles each time they catch each other’s eye; Jeongin pokes ruefully at his rice and then accepts the tissue Changbin presses into his hand, wiping up the casualties. It was probably good tuna. Such are the tribulations of maknae life, or something. A silly half-formed thought spins through him about my life is the hardest that’s ever been lived; Jeongin glances around the table at his hyungs, still here, still his, despite everything, and smiles small and private into his bowl. 

His. A nice thought. 

“You good, Jeongin-ah?” Chan’s voice comes from his right, and Jeongin almost startles. It’s almost funny how much a degree of kindness can make him feel scolded, admonished, but he swallows away the sting of fear as best he can.

“Yeah, hyung.” He looks back at Chan, sees the tangle of concern and fondness and fear that, altogether, might amount to love; he feels it in his own chest, the shape of it, and grins. “Yeah, I think I’m doing pretty good.”

21:19 [ hyunjinie ] Btw

21:19 [ hyunjinie ] [img_241120122346.png]

21:19 [ hyunjinie ] Who fucked in the practice room and left their gross hands all over the mirrors

21:28 [ lixie🐣 ] i thought there was a rule about the practice room?????

21:42 [ minho ] rude to call him out when he isn’t even in the chat to defend himself ngl

Chapter Text

Jeongin goes back to their apartment after lunch, feeling fully whole and fulfilled in a way he hadn’t realised he was lacking. He doesn’t have much else he needs to do today; he could practice more vocals, or piano, or dance, or he could do laundry and clean his room. Instead, he settles on the sofa and scrolls through Instagram reels for an embarrassingly long period of time. The silence of the apartment is kind of nice, though, now he doesn’t feel quite so alone in it.

Felix texts him a cute selfie of him and Jisung later, both of them playing video games, and invites Jeongin to join them, but he declines. Minho sends him a photo of a fox licking a window, with no caption, which Jeongin ignores. Changbin sends a mirror selfie of himself, clearly in the middle of cleaning Hyunjin’s bathroom, with the caption: you see what hyung does for you? And several smiley emojis. 

Jeongin reacts with a thumbs-down emoji, adds You brought this on yourself and then, feeling a little guilty, adds Come hang out once you’re done if you want, wincing a little but refusing to let himself hesitate before he hits send. It has the unfortunate tenor of a booty call, he knows, but – more than anything, he just wants to be near them. Changbin especially – the earthen steadiness of his presence, the way he always knows how to make Jeongin squirm and, equally, knows precisely when to back off and stop prodding. He loves Felix and Jisung; he does not think he could handle their high-octane energy right now, especially in combination with each other. He swipes through eight more Instagram reels, sends one to Seungmin of a bird flying into a doorway, and makes himself wait ten seconds before clicking on the notification when Changbin texts him back.

6.19 pm [ Binnie hyung~~~ ] Hyunjinnie is tired but hyung will come visit!! Give me half an hour :)

He reacts with a heart to Changbin’s text, and then, a few minutes later, sends a proper reply.

6.25 pm [ Jeonginnie ] Do you want food?

6.26 pm [ Binnie hyung~~~ ] Our maknae takes such good care of me~~

6.26 pm [ Binnie hyung~~~ ] Get whatever you want, Ayennie. Use hyung’s card.

Jeongin rolls his eyes, even though no one else is there to see it. He has Changbin’s information saved in his delivery apps, and Chan’s, and Felix’s, but he’s not going to use it. Instead, he places an order for fried chicken on his own card, hopefully timed so it’ll arrive at the same time Changbin does. At least then he can make Changbin talk to the delivery people instead.

He shuts his eyes, tips his head back against the couch, sets an alarm for twenty minutes in case he dozes off without meaning to. Everything’s changed and nothing has. He doesn’t know how to reconcile the two. Changbin still tells him to use his card, and also, four days ago, he’d spread Jeongin’s legs with his own and looped an arm around Jeongin’s waist and now Jeongin can’t stop thinking about biting his bicep. More than that, can’t stop thinking about – being held, kept, protected. It’s stupid. He chafes against being their youngest, their baby, cringes when Jisung calls him aegi-ya and flinches away when Chan tries to ruffle his hair, and then something small and yearning in him just wants to be treated like he’s still breakable.

He’s the same person he was four days ago because, even four days ago, he was eight different people with seven different hyungs. Doesn’t know how to strip himself back and work out which version of himself is quite real. Jeongin counts to three, then tells himself to stop thinking about it, opens Instagram; startles when someone knocks on the door.

He doesn’t have to get up before someone opens it, either. Jeongin doesn’t remember ever telling Changbin the code for the electronic lock, but maybe Chan did. Maybe Changbin watched one of them – both of them – closely enough to remember it being input, fingers following a familiar pattern. Either way: Changbin makes his way through to the living room, dumps his hoodie over the arm of the couch because he knows it annoys both of them, and collapses onto the cushions next to Jeongin dramatically. Even though the tension that leaks out of his body at their proximity, at the way his feet kick against Jeongin’s thighs, is genuine. 

Jeongin just sighs, and lets his body be jostled. “Hyung.”

“Iyennie,” Changbin coos, with weaponised fondness – not feigned, just overwrought. No less genuine for being performed. Jeongin curls into himself a little, but lets himself relax into the contact. Changbin tilts his head, looks at him with a horribly tender sort of curiosity. “You okay?”

“Mmm,” Jeongin says, as affirmative as he can manage. He’s – it’s all twisted up in his chest, but he thinks he’s doing okay. “Just, um. A lot. With everyone feeling different ways.”

Changbin winces. “Yeah. I mean, I have to live with Hyunjin, so.”

“Oh, ouch, ” Jeongin says, faux-sympathetic, and then cackles when Changbin slaps him on the thigh in reproach.

“But you’re really feeling okay?” Changbin asks, a little more seriously, once Jeongin stops laughing. He’s blinking slowly, looking at Jeongin carefully. “I know we kind of… started all of this. And I never wanted to push you. You can talk to us about anything, you know? To me.”

Not wanting to push him now is part of the problem, Jeongin thinks. But Changbin’s words are earnest and genuine, so Jeongin swallows down the impulsive, bitter retort and sighs. “I know. I really am okay. I want this. All of you. I don’t know how to make that any clearer than it is.”

Changbin blinks, looking faintly wounded. “Well, you could have told me that.”

“I told Seungminnie-hyung,” Jeongin mumbles, abruptly self-conscious. He tries not to curl into himself, even as embarrassment unfurls its way through his limbs, and leans into Changbin instead of away from him.

“Jeongin-ah,” Changbin says gently, “we’re not in each others’ heads, you know.” He has a gift, Jeongin thinks, at making the most nigh-condescending things sound earnest; it must come from the same skill that gives him the ability to make genuine things sound like condescending teasing. Jeongin thinks he’s grateful. Can’t quite put his finger on it.

Jeongin swallows. He says, mulishly, “I told Jisung-hyung, and he – he won’t even talk to me now. Unless we’re in a group.” He can’t – quite remember exactly what he’d said to Jisung, but the want is so thick in him he thinks he must have said something, thinks it fills him too wholly to go unnoticed. To go unspoken.

Changbin’s face does – something. A spasm, maybe, something tenuous and awkward at Jisung’s name. “Jisung has his own… he’s…”

Like Minho and Felix had been saying. A part of Jeongin rears its head, wants to yell and scream something bitter, like he’s not in any of their heads either. Another part wants to swallow down all the bitterness, sour on the back of his tongue, and listen to Changbin. Changbin’s calm expression reaffirms itself, recollects and solidifies. He pokes Jeongin’s thigh with his toe again.

“If I get Jisung to talk to you, will you hear him out?” Changbin resolves. “He needs to, he knows he needs to, he just… Aish, Ayennie, he just likes you too much. We all do.” 

Jeongin hums. He’s heard those words a lot the past few days. But… “You too, hyung?”

“Hmm?”

“You like me too much,” Jeongin says, quieter. Changbin’s gaze weighs heavy on him, eyes passing over his face, Jeongin’s shoulders, all over. “Right, hyung? You said we. ”

Changbin falters. Jeongin watches him smooth his expression into neutrality in real time: the wrinkle between his brows disappears like someone’s brushed it away, his lips twist into a fond half-crescent smile, his throat works. And then he’s gentle again, reassuring, his demeanour the perfect hyung. Guilt rises thick and immediate in Jeongin’s throat, tastes like bile. “Don’t do that, hyung,” he says, before he can second-guess it. He’s swallowed down enough unsaid things, these past few days.

Changbin winces, says “Do what, Iyennie?”

“Pretend you don’t –” Jeongin falters, scrambling to his knees on the couch with humiliating clumsiness to shuffle closer to Changbin and look him in the eye. “Don’t act like there’s – pretend you don’t –” It feels presumptuous, almost, and Jeongin hates himself for saying it a little, but he thinks again of Changbin schooling his expression into gentleness and steels himself. “Tell me what you want, hyung. Not what you think I want.”

Changbin blinks, all slow and liquid, eyelashes fluttering. His gaze drops to Jeongin’s lips, and then back up to his eyes. “Jeonginnie…”

“You just said none of you are in my head,” Jeongin says, careful. “I’m not – hyung, I’m not in yours, either.”

Something dawns in Changbin’s face. His gaze falls lower again, something written across his lips like a point taken. “I want you,” Changbin says, like he’s biting his tongue. And then, like he’s pulling his teeth out of it, blood rushing into his mouth, spilling out, “Of course I want you, Jeongin-ah. I like you so much I don’t know what to do with any of it. How could any of us – how could I not?”

Desire blurs its way through the seams of Jeongin’s body, the place between the flesh and the bone. He has spent so long waiting to be wanted. Seeing things through the cracks of closed doors and turning away because he knows better, knows what’s at stake. Waiting for the doors to be opened to him. Jeongin leans into Changbin’s body, thinks of the dam breaking all those days ago, thinks about how Changbin had looked right through him and seen how badly Jeongin wanted him and still gotten Hyunjin to blow him instead, wonders if perhaps that had been – “Hyung,” Jeongin says, close enough now that Changbin must be able to feel the brush of his breath. 

There is a precipice at Jeongin’s centre, running all the way down from his throat, a gorge with a river at the bottom. He leans forward, presses his lips to Changbin’s, takes the plunge.

He expects – he isn’t sure how he expects Changbin to kiss him back. As it is, Changbin’s lips are soft and gentle against his, moving slowly in a way that belies all the desperation Jeongin feels, that pent up desire. Changbin savours, and relishes, and kisses Jeongin like he is committing every single square millimetre of Jeongin’s mouth to memory. He doesn’t seem like he’s trying to take, more so he kisses Jeongin now like he’s being given it instead.

God, Jeongin feels so overcome with the breadth of his want. It tears through him, how it keeps tearing through him, how it washes over him and drowns him out. His hands clutch at Changbin’s shoulders, greedy, maybe, unsure what he’s searching for, but Changbin rests his hands on Jeongin’s waist and keeps him steady. Holds him firmly, even now. 

Jeongin grazes his teeth over the swell of Changbin’s lower lip and feels satisfaction thrill through him at the way Changbin’s chest jumps with breath in response, the way his fingers press briefly into Jeongin’s waist. Jeongin pulls away from Changbin’s lips just far enough to look at him, to remind himself of the evidence of desire: his hyung’s eyes gone dark with the heady song of pupils. Changbin’s lips, already so – biteable, Jeongin thinks, feeling briefly insane – swollen red and spit-slick. “Hyung,” Jeongin breathes, feels his own voice scratch raw along the lining of his throat, revels in it.

Changbin swallows. “Jeonginnie.” Jeongin watches his chest rise and fall. “I. You should talk to –”

“Stop thinking,” Jeongin interrupts, rude, brash, earnest, “about what other people feel, hyung. For five minutes.”

Changbin just lifts his hands from Jeongin’s waist, taps at the underside of his chin with his index finger in reprimand. “Yah, so demanding,” he says, teasing, something in his voice a little loose, like he isn’t quite sure how to do what Jeongin’s asking. “We spoil you.”

Yeah, maybe, Jeongin thinks. He hums, tips his head a little, exposes the line of his neck, his jaw. Changbin isn’t any taller than him, especially not sitting like this, but Jeongin lowers his eyelids and looks at Changbin in a way that he hopes burns. “Spoil me more, then. Kiss me again, hyung.”

“Oh,” Changbin says. A grin broadens across his lips, horribly fond. Looking at it feels a little like staring directly into the sun, in that it seems like it’s probably bad for Jeongin’s health and he can only do it for so long before he’s blinking and looking away, face red with something that might be heat – but he makes himself look back anyway. Changbin says, still almost smug, “You’re going to be as bad as our Hyunjinnie, huh?”

It probably says something, that instead of don’t talk about him when I’ve asked you to kiss me, Jeongin’s heart clenches in his chest, raw, earnest, endeared. He’d always known this would be tangled. “Bad how,” Jeongin manages instead, and then, as Changbin opens his mouth to reply, parts his lips just so, lids his eyes; Changbin visibly swallows his words. It would be funny if it weren’t also addicting, heady, to know that – Jeongin did that. That Changbin wanted him so badly it made him look stupid, or however the joke went. That Jeongin was worth wanting enough for Changbin to forget what he was going to say because he was distracted by the way Jeongin is looking at him, as sultry as he knows how, lips hopefully as red from kissing as Changbin’s.

Changbin blinks heavily, like he’s trying to remember how to even breathe, let alone think. And then something clears in his eyes. “Exactly like that, you brat,” scolding, but only in jest. In a way that makes something simmer under Jeongin’s skin, a return to normality. It makes Jeongin laugh; he can’t keep up the act like this, a grin spreading across his face, and it seems neither can Changbin. His gaze softens the longer he stares at Jeongin, something so free and vulnerable that Jeongin almost can’t meet his eyes.

“Well?” Jeongin asks, once Changbin’s face becomes too soft to bear. He isn’t playing as much like this, asks for it in a way that isn’t trying to be anything. Just asks. “Kiss me, Changbin-hyung.”

Changbin exhales, shaky, then tugs Jeongin close by the hips; he kisses Jeongin with a gentleness that’s knee-weakening, visceral. There’s a teasing certainty in the way he moves. Like he knows exactly where he is, who he’s with, what he wants; Jeongin shudders and melts into it, feels boneless, feels safe. Changbin leaves one hand on his hip, but draws the other up to cup Jeongin’s cheek, fingers splayed across his jaw, tilting his chin, and Jeongin lets himself be moved. Lets himself be kissed. Like their bodies are both extensions of each other, conduits of the current of desire, where it runs slick but not urgent between their skin and their bones and their bodies.

It’s not like the last time, kissing Changbin in the living room to prove a point, urgent, demanding, insistent. Something has shifted in Jeongin’s chest, rolled over and gone back to sleep more comfortable than it was before, and there’s a patience living in him now where there wasn’t before; he thinks he could do this for hours. Changbin kisses easily, with confidence, and lets Jeongin drag his hands all over the planes of his chest. He feels trapped in honey, in amber, but doesn’t mind the syrup sweetness of time, moves slow and viscous, lets Changbin move him. 

He isn’t sure how much time passes here. Not much else seems to matter beyond Changbin, warm and solid beneath Jeongin’s hands, and Changbin’s mouth, and his nose, brushing against Jeongin’s, and his chin, and the rest of his face, his hair, his body. Jeongin figures he’ll keep kissing Changbin until something forcibly tears them apart, and just about as soon as he has the thought, the door to the living room gets nudged open. Jeongin hadn’t even heard the front door open and close, so focused on Changbin. 

“Oh –” comes Chan’s voice, surprised in a way that suggests he isn’t surprised so much as he is embarrassed about it. Even then, he makes no move to return to the entryway. Jeongin can’t see him clearly, but he can feel Chan’s eyes on him. “Oh. Binnie, Jeonginnie. Um, ah, sorry. I’ll just –”

Changbin pulls away just far enough that he can turn around to smile at Chan. Jeongin isn’t entirely sure what he himself looks like right now, but hopes to God that it isn’t as bad as Changbin. In any case, he sympathises greatly with the flush that spreads across Chan’s cheeks. Changbin’s lips are spit-slick and his hair is all mussed, eyes shiny. If Changbin looked at him like that, Jeongin thinks he might possibly die on the spot. 

“Relax, hyung,” Changbin says, good-natured. “Jesus. You’ve seen worse.”

Jeongin untangles himself from Changbin enough to look at Chan properly, just in time to catch the twist of his mouth, half-amused, like he’s caught between two equally opposed forces and will tear himself in half to sate them both. Chan’s laugh is throaty and only faintly strained. “Sorry,” he says again, hand on the back of his neck; it stings to know Chan’s nervous tic so well, stings worse to know that Jeongin brought it on, at least in part. But Chan’s eyes are creased in a bashful smile. “Um. Do you two –”

“Have you eaten, hyung?” Jeongin interrupts, emboldened and probably still a little rude. Chan’s eyes flick to him immediately, and the flush returns in full force; Jeongin refuses to look away, holds his gaze, almost challenging. Then, as gently as he can manage, “We’ve – uh, we’ve got some food left over, I think. We could eat together.”

Chan’s face falls a little, though. Like he doesn’t want to say no, not to either of them. “Ah… Innie, I’m sorry. I ate with Minho at the company. And it’s getting pretty late now. Otherwise I would.”

Jeongin just blinks. It doesn’t feel much like a rejection, for once. Like Chan isn’t trying to find an excuse to avoid him. He nods, slowly, pressing his lips together. He isn’t sure where his phone even ended up, after he’d started kissing Changbin. Probably it’s fallen between the couch cushions. “Right. Um, what… what time is it?”

Changbin, at least, seems to have kept track of his belongings. He pulls his phone out and spins it around to show Jeongin. Nearly half ten. Not late, by any means, but Chan looks tired. And now that Jeongin is looking at him, his own exhaustion hits him like a truck.

Changbin chuckles. “Is the baby sleepy?” he teases, and it doesn’t sting the way it might have done before, not when Jeongin can still feel the phantom pressure of Changbin’s lips against his own, the lazy curl of warmth through his body in response to Changbin’s touch. It’s only a joke. Changbin jostles Jeongin out of the way with, frankly, unfair effortlessness, then stands, says, “Channie-hyung, you better be coming to bed too, yeah?”

An incredulous laugh works its way free of Chan’s lips, sounding as though it did so despite his better judgment. “With –?”

“If you want,” Changbin coos, fluttering his eyelashes. He snorts. “No, hyung, you just need to sleep.”

“Mind out of the gutter,” Jeongin adds, pushing his luck. Changbin laughs, at least, and he holds a hand out to help Jeongin up off the couch too. Jeongin doesn’t need it: he takes Changbin’s hand anyway, curls his fingers around Changbin’s wrist, right over his pulse point. He’s perfectly capable of levering himself off the sofa, but, well. If Changbin is offering, he can at least do some of the work. His biceps flex as he pulls Jeongin’s weight up, somehow entirely unbothered.

Chan, on the other hand, looks extremely bothered. He’s staring at Changbin’s arms with thinly veiled – desire? Want? Jeongin knows what Chan looks like when he wants something, but he’s never seen it like this. And then he looks at Jeongin with it, too, spilling over, all down his face. “Kids these days,” he says, teasingly, tentatively, like he’s pushing his luck too. “No respect for their hyungs, huh?”

“Can’t hear you,” Jeongin says, “over the sound of all your joints cracking. Hyung. ”

“Oh. Oh, okay, I see how it is.” Chan’s eyes are dark; the river moves in them. His gaze drags white water over Jeongin’s skin, staticky, turbulent – then snaps away all at once, the twist of his mouth almost guilty as his eyes dart aside. Jeongin tilts his head, but Chan doesn’t look back at him. The quiet in the room grows an uncomfortable edge for a moment.

Changbin narrows his eyes. “Are the two of you going to be weird about this the moment I leave?”

“No,” Chan says, at the same time as Jeongin admits, “Probably.” Chan’s laugh is strained and pitchy, rattles the same uncomfortable way in Jeongin’s skull as nails on brick walls or the squeak of a certain brand of marker on a whiteboard. 

Changbin grimaces. “Points for honesty, Jeonginnie.”

“We’ll be fine,” Chan says, which is clearly a lie on his part. Jeongin looks at him, furrowing his brow. He’s not trying to be weird about things, but Chan is… Chan is just so…

“Yah, hyung,” Changbin says, clearly scolding. His body makes an aborted kind of movement, like he wants to knock his shoulder against Chan’s, or sucker punch him in the arm. “Just. Don’t be stupid. It’s unbecoming.”

“It’s not like I do it on purpose,” Chan says, defensive. Maybe it’s the light, or the way he’s curling his shoulders in on himself, or the way he’s standing, just inside the doorway like he couldn’t bring himself to step in any further, but he looks so young right now. Jeongin watches him carefully, the way his uncertainty travels through his entire body, and how it curls up around him in twists and turns. “It’s not like you have any room to talk, either.”

Changbin scoffs. “What’s that supposed to mean?” he says, and Jeongin thinks there’s a real bite in there somewhere, the sharp knot of frustration, but it’s layered beneath enough fondness to dull the blade. Then he glances at Jeongin again, winces. “Don’t let him get to you, Jeonginnie. And text the others, yeah?”

“I’m right here,” Chan says dully, scrubbing a hand over his jaw. Jeongin knows that habit, knows it works its way out when Chan is stressed, or brittle, or angry. But the tension stays buried: Chan turns his back and heads into the bathroom, and a minute later Jeongin hears the humming of the water pipes and the white noise of the shower. Changbin makes an apologetic sort of face.

“Hyung,” Jeongin says, then cuts himself off. Every sentence clawing at the portcullis of his teeth is more humiliating than the last: Stay, maybe? or Did you have to wind him up? or Tell me it’ll all be okay in the end. He reaches for Changbin’s shoulder again, as if to steady himself, and mumbles, “Drive safe.”

Changbin laughs. “I’ll be sure to instruct the subway driver well, Iyennie.”

Jeongin makes a face. He can feel himself blushing a little, even more when Changbin reaches over to pinch at his cheek and coo cutely. He ducks out of Changbin’s reach a little, trying to ignore the way his affection makes something reassuring and happy bubble up in his stomach. “Forget I said anything, then. For laughing at me.”

“I’m not laughing at you, aegi,” Changbin says, but he’s still smiling a little. All soft, and squishy, in a way that Jeongin can’t look at for too long. “Thank you. Get some sleep, okay? Try not to worry about everything. Chan-hyung will come around.”

“I’m not worrying,” Jeongin says, even though he is, a little. Mostly he just wants Chan to look at him, again. Just look at him. He just swallows it all down, and makes a big show of checking the watch he isn’t wearing. “Look at the time. Are you still here?”

“Aish,” Changbin says, rolling his eyes, “I’m going, I’m going.” He lets Jeongin shepherd him to the door, then hesitates, looking as though he’s searching for something to say – some climactic comment, the perfect summative words to sate whatever unsettled thing is still gnawing away inside Jeongin’s stomach. Jeongin should know; he’s waiting for it, too. His breath works shallowly in his chest. Changbin looks at him for a moment, looks – his eyes work over all the places Jeongin knows he’s less than perfect, the smudged makeup and his unbrushed teeth and the long awkward lines of his body, with impossible fondness drawn through his eyes – and then clicks his tongue like an old grandmother, sighs, and steps wordlessly out into the hallway.

Jeongin closes the door after him, hears the click echo. Abruptly, galvanised, he fishes in his pocket for his phone. He thinks about words left unfinished – or unsaid in the first place, looking for it, elusive. There are a few messages on the band groupchat, which he ignores, and a Tiktok link from Felix. Instead, Jeongin navigates to his message thread with Hyunjin. 

10.47 pm [ Jeonginnie ] Hey

10.47 pm [ Jeonginnie ] Are you busy tomorrow? Can we get coffee?

10.47 pm [ Jeonginnie ] My treat~

He switches his phone off. The boxes of fried chicken are still on their coffee table, mostly finished. Jeongin clears them up quickly, puts the leftovers in the fridge for Chan to eat tomorrow morning, and then rounds through their apartment, switching off all the lights. Normally, Chan does the closing shift, since he always comes home the latest. Jeongin sighs. He lingers in the living room door for a second. The shower switches off down the hall. He can’t quite decide how he’s feeling now, better or worse, and just settles on different, looking around at the home he shares with Chan.

It remains unchanged. Even if nothing else has.

11.19 pm [ hyunjinie ] if youd like 💞

11.19 pm [ hyunjinie ] i have schedule at 8 we could go before ?

11.20 pm [ hyunjinie ] if thats too early i understand 💗💗

07.01 am [ Jeonginnie ] I can come to yours?

07.08 am [ hyunjinie ] if you want

07.09 am [ Jeonginnie ] Okay :) 

He’s carefully balancing two cups of iced Americano when Hyunjin opens his front door before Jeongin even gets a chance to knock. He’s in the middle of combing through his hair, dressed in a casual tracksuit, looking young and fresh faced and soft. Jeongin looks at him, and keeps looking, and keeps looking.

“Are you coming in?” Hyunjin asks, a little brash, brazen. He takes the coffee from Jeongin, too, side stepping out the way and then closing the door behind them. He’s not cruel, not mean, but his words are a little harsh. Defensive, and cornered.

“Hyung,” Jeongin says, and then falters, not quite sure where to go from there. There are a lot of things to say. He thinks, briefly, about the gentle silence he’d woken up to this morning. Changbin, and the aftermath. Even though nothing had really happened , he’d felt Chan’s presence – and then, the absence of it – like a gaping hole as he’d gotten ready alone, the yawning mouth of the river. But he’s still looking at Hyunjin, and – that makes it easier, somehow. The familiar slope of his shoulders. The mismatched shapes of his narrowed eyes, squinted in something like appraisal.

Jeongin fumbles with his straw for a moment. “Hyung,” he blurts, “I’m – I’m sorry we argued. I don’t like arguing with you.”

Hyunjin visibly winces, and Jeongin fights the urge to berate himself – he could have been more eloquent, eased their way into it, said the right thing, somehow. But he makes himself look Hyunjin in the eye, as earnest as he can: I’m here. I’m trying. The crease of Hyunjin’s lips looks suspiciously like guilt, and Jeongin knows the way that will twist itself into anything else within the cavern of Hyunjin’s mind, the way it will squirm its way free as teasing or anger or sweat, take any form except its own. He knows Hyunjin. He’d almost let himself forget it, distracted by the tantalising overlay of having him – but Jeongin has wanted Hyunjin for as long as he can remember, had a puppy crush that swam its way downstream until it blossomed outwards into something wider, broader, ocean-deep. He has spent a long time looking at Hyunjin. He fits his straw between his lips and takes a long sip of his coffee, raises an eyebrow, says without saying It’s your turn now.

Hyunjin sighs. He inhales again, like it’s the hardest breath he’s ever taken. “I… Me too. I’m sorry, too. Jeonginnie, I –” he falters, a misstep, moves towards Jeongin by a centimeter and then stops, like he thinks better of it. “I was unfair to you. I never wanted to hurt you. This entire time.”

“I was unfair too,” Jeongin says. Even if Hyunjin makes no move towards him, Jeongin steps towards him. The gap it bridges feels miles wide, even if it brings him no closer. “Minho-hyung told me. And Felix-hyung, a bit. And Changbin-hyung.”

This, if anything, seems to make Hyunjin feel worse. He doesn’t put his coffee down, but his brow crumples, and his hand twitches towards his face like he aches to cover it. “I was worse,” he says, like he doesn’t want to admit it, “God, Jeonginnie. I don’t know what I was thinking, I just –”

“You told me you – that – that it didn’t have to mean anything,” Jeongin says. He feels so stupid, standing in Hyunjin’s entryway with a coffee in hand at seven-thirty in the morning, bleary-eyed and barefaced because he’d rolled straight out of bed in order to get here before Hyunjin had to leave. “I – I know you, hyung. I might be wrong, but. I think you were just saying that.”

Hyunjin looks at Jeongin with a sort of fervour bordering on desperation, devotion, his eyes blisteringly intent; there’s a fire in them that hurts to look at, too complex to unpick further than want. “Jeonginnie,” he says hoarsely. “I’m. I don’t want to – You know how I am. I don’t want to be too much.”

“Hyung,” Jeongin says, takes another step forwards, close enough now to touch but not reaching out. Their coffees are sandwiched between their bodies. It would probably be funny, if Jeongin’s entire body weren’t prickling with unsaid things, with the sensation of unspoken heat, with years of unsated desire and the impossible paradox of having but not having. Jeongin swallows. Says, “I’ve wanted all of you for so long. All of you. All I’ve done for seven years is want you; you’re not going to be too much.”

“You say want, ” Hyunjin parries, almost bitter, despite the fondness tucked in the corner of his smile. “Jeonginnie. What does that even mean?”

The answer, really: Jeongin doesn’t know. Desire, fickle, and in as many forms as it takes. There is no single answer. Eight, maybe, each wearing a different face. Looking at Hyunjin now, though, Jeongin isn’t quite sure what to say. 

“I don’t know,” he says, then winces as Hyunjin rolls his eyes a little. “Hyung, I… I just know that I want you. Does it have to be more than that? That I just want to be with you, that I hate when we fight, and I hate when I don’t see you. That I don’t want to do anything without you. Any of you. It won’t be too much.”

Hyunjin readjusts his grip on his coffee cup. The ice in it rattles, loud, between them. A drop of condensation runs off the side of it, drips down until it lands on Jeongin’s wrist, cold. Hyunjin’s face warps; his lips purse, in the way they all do when they think Jeongin is being naive. He knows what that face is, the way it aches, biting and sharp.

“Hyung, please,” before Hyunjin can even open his mouth, water running down his wrist, “just listen to me.”

Hyunjin hesitates. The hand holding his Americano is shaking slightly, and Jeongin fixes his eyes there, on the spidery elegance of Hyunjin’s fingers, because it’s easier than looking him in the eye. “I know what I want,” Jeongin tells Hyunjin’s hand and its nervous tremor. “Hyung, I know. It’s – it’s not like the rest of you have –” What were Minho’s words? “– a neatly negotiated seven-way polycule where you all talk about your feelings. I know we shouldn’t do this. I know it’s stupid. But I – I love you, and I want you, and –” He nearly says all of you again, then bites it back, reaches out to place his hand over Hyunjin’s own. The contact is electrifying. This, here, matters. “I don’t want to go back. I don’t want to pretend it didn’t happen.”

Hyunjin laughs, low and shaky, and Jeongin drags his eyes back up to Hyunjin’s face. “Iyennie, our lives are just one long string of pretending things didn’t happen.”

“I don’t want to pretend around you, ” Jeongin says, frustrated. “Why am I different, hyung? You fuck all the others. You’re half in love with all the others. You’re not subtle.”

“You’re not different,” Hyunjin says, sounding deeply distressed by this fact. They’re so close; Hyunjin steps backwards, stumbles a little, staggering under the weight of his words. His shoulders hit the wall, body sloping against it. His head tips back a little too, eyes falling away from Jeongin’s to look upwards, and then, world-weary, sounding a thousand years older than he should, “ that’s the problem.”

“Does it have to be a problem?” Jeongin asks. “Hyunjinnie-hyung. Look at me?”

Hyunjin laughs again, wetly. “Maybe I don’t want you to see that.”

Warmth burgeons in Jeongin’s chest, impossibly fond. “Hyung,” he says, “if you think I hadn’t worked out that you’re a hopeless romantic in eight years of knowing you –”

“Who said anything about being a hopeless romantic!”

“Have you met yourself, hyung,” Jeongin teases, and at last, at last, Hyunjin’s eyes meet his: creased in amusement, even as Hyunjin worries his lip with his teeth, anxious and absent-minded. The river runs through Jeongin’s veins, broad and deep with desire. It’s carved its path through the earth of his body, its banks steeper every year, each flood eroding the sides further until the whole valley has known the taste of the river water: love, in whatever shape, in its most complicated eight-sided form, studded through the floodplains like specks of gold. Hyunjin looks afraid. Jeongin knows the shape of it too well. His lips part, and the space between them feels as wide as the mouth of the river, right back where they began.

“Jeonginnie,” Hyunjin says, throaty, small-voiced. It’s the question and the answer. And then, softer, more careful, barely a whisper between them: “Jeongin.”

Jeongin steps forward, slow enough that Hyunjin can read his intention, enough that Hyunjin could stop him, but he doesn’t. Instead, Hyunjin’s hand comes up to cup the back of Jeongin’s neck, cold, damp from holding his coffee, and his fingers twist in the curls of hair at the nape of Jeongin’s neck. This channel of need, this torrent of longing, this trickle-down desire. Jeongin kisses him like that, presses Hyunjin back against the wall with a gentle solidity, and Hyunjin’s body sags against the weight of it. Jeongin holds them steady, gets his free hand on the curve of Hyunjin’s hip and holds him there, swipes his thumb over the fabric of Hyunjin’s waistband and then pushes further, into the fragile skin beneath it.

Hyunjin’s breath catches. It staggers between them, stuck halfway between Jeongin’s lips. The cold shapes of their coffees press into Jeongin’s belly, chilled even through his shirt. “Jeonginnie,” Hyunjin breathes again, and opens his mouth again, as though there’s more to say, but hesitates there with his lips parted. The plush shape of them, sleep-chapped, snags Jeongin’s eye like a tripwire – but he holds himself still, lets Hyunjin catch his breath. Close enough to kiss or be kissed; he’s done one of the two. Hyunjin will see to the other if he wants to. Hyunjin’s eyes screw up into something almost guilty, for a moment, and he spits it out like it’s burning him: “Iyennie, I’m in love with you.”

Jeongin blinks. “Okay,” he says. It sits warm in his chest to hear it. He’s kind of always known. “Can we kiss more now?”

Hyunjin’s laugh, the gust of it arching over Jeongin’s lips, is disbelieving. Even so, something in his body melts a little. All the tension in it, the contraction of his muscles. His head tips against the wall again, looking upwards again – less like he’s hoping to find something there, and more like he’s just looking. “Yeah,” he says, settled and grounded. “Yeah, we can kiss more now.”

Jeongin doesn’t think he needs to say anything back. He’s – Hyunjin knows. Love is tenuous, something that stretches between the eight of them in a thousand different shades. The twists and knots of it are something Jeongin has never been able to untangle, unsure if he even wants to. He kisses Hyunjin back, says all the things he can’t speak aloud against Hyunjin’s lips, puts the words into his mouth and feels the way Hyunjin’s throat bobs and flexes when he swallows. That’s love. There it is. In the way he tastes. In the way Hyunjin tied himself in knots because he’d thought it hadn’t meant anything. In their bodies, pressed against each other with two Americanos trapped in between.

He hesitates once more, draws back, trying not to groan when Hyunjin chases after him – adds, “I’m. Um. I don’t want you to think this doesn’t mean anything either.”

Hyunjin chokes out a laugh. “I’d fucking hope not, Jeonginnie,” he says, immeasurably fond.

“Okay. Uh, great.” Jeongin blinks at him, the kissed-silly mess of his lips, the tangle Jeongin has teased into his hair. “Don’t you have a schedule?”

“Fuck,” Hyunjin says, and then, straining to see over Jeongin’s shoulder into the hallway mirror, “ Fuck. Jeonginnie!” He shoves at Jeongin’s chest, affronted. “Iyen-ah! What have you done, you fucking menace – let me out –” Jeongin lets Hyunjin worm his way free of the space between his body and the wall and flee for the bathroom, grinning a little self-consciously. He doesn’t touch his lips like a teenager who’s just been kissed for the first time, but it’s a near thing.

“Hyung,” he calls, fishing in his phone for his pocket. “Who’d you bet on?”

 Hyunjin turns back just in the doorway of the bathroom, looking over his shoulder. The face he makes is… a little exasperated, a little amused. A little embarrassed, maybe. Like he doesn’t quite want to admit it. “Why do you want to know?”

“Just…” because he’s tired of not knowing, maybe. He says, though, “just curious,” and adds, “maybe I’ll take a bribe.”

Hyunjin’s laugh, where it had been full of disbelief, and fragile, and shy, becomes conniving and sly and confident. “What sort of a bribe?”

“That depends on who you bet on.”

“Minho-hyung,” Hyunjin says, and his eyebrows twitch a little, cheeks flushing. Like he’s thinking about it. About them together. Jeongin and Minho. Jeongin thinks about the practice room yesterday; hopes to God that none of them actually noticed. “Stop distracting me!”

Jeongin blinks at him, whines “Why Minho- hyung?”, more out of an urge to rile Hyunjin up than any actual curiosity, snickers into his own chest at the squawk that echoes from the next room. “Hyung! No, seriously, explain to me –”

“Leave me alone, ” Hyunjin fusses, harried. “Get out of my house.”

“I’m holding both our coffees, hyung.”

“Give me my coffee and then get out of my house.”

“It’s like you hate me,” Jeongin says, sticking out his lower lip. The childishness aerates his blood, makes him feel like he’s made of something fizzy and sweet and easy. “It’s like you despise me, hyung. I’m telling on you to – everyone. Immediately.”

“I need to leave, ” Hyunjin says, eye of the storm. He ducks back into the bathroom, clattering something around until he reappears with a toothbrush in his mouth. “Yah, Yang Jeongin. What’s wrong with you?”

“What’s wrong with me? What’s wrong with you ?” Jeongin counters, grinning. Everything feels so light, like it’s falling into place. Toothpaste drips down Hyunjin’s chin, and he spins back into the bathroom with an alarmed noise before it can drip down to his clothes. “Maybe I want to stay here, hyung, did you ever consider that?”

“Why would you want to stay here?” Hyunjin calls, muffled. “You’re a menace, Yang Jeongin, get out of my house!”

“Why is everybody shouting?” says Changbin, opening the door to his room. “It’s not even eight. Oh, hi Jeonginnie.” He sounds, humiliatingly, like he’s accepted the lattermost sentence as a valid answer to his first question. “Did you bring me coffee, too?”

“Um,” Jeongin says, flushing a little. He does have two coffees. He’s only taken, like, two sips max of his own. “Yes?”

Changbin has a way of looking at a person that manages to be simultaneously withering and affectionate; it makes Jeongin feel as though he is a piece of fruit in a dehydrator, slowly shrivelling up, except that the dehydrator is also powered by the unmitigated radiance of the literal sun. Thankfully, Changbin doesn’t actually call him out on it. He brushes past Jeongin and moves into the kitchen, and Jeongin shivers at the ghost of his touch against Jeongin’s spine, the barely-there heat of it, the negative space in its wake. He feels the cold more keenly in the places that had, for a moment, been warm. 

“Jeonginnie,” Hyunjin says, softer, appearing again from the bathroom looking considerably more put-together; at least, less viscerally and overtly just-kissed. His eyes are so, so soft around the edges. “I really do have to go. I – thank you. For coming. It was good to see you this morning.”

“I – yeah,” he says. Hyunjin’s face twists up into a gentle smile. “Yeah. Me too. Hyung.”

“Aish,” Hyunjin says. He turns away to put his shoes on, not bothering to do up the laces. “Stop looking at me like that.”

“Like what?”

Hyunjin stands back up, meets his eyes, drags his gaze all across Jeongin’s face and steps a little closer. “Like… like that.”

“I’m looking at you how I always look at you,” Jeongin says. He’s still holding their drinks, condensation cold and damp in his palm. Hyunjin puts his hand around one of them, brushing their fingers together. He isn’t really sure when Hyunjin starts kissing him after that, just that he does, and it doesn’t last nearly as long as Jeongin wants it to. Hyunjin tastes like mint and a little waxy, like chapstick, and when he pulls away after a brief few seconds, he takes his coffee with him.

“Like that,” Hyunjin says again, blinking slow and languid. Jeongin could melt here, in the entryway to Hyunjin and Changbin’s apartment, could liquify into a puddle by the door and seep into the floorboards, if it weren’t for Hyunjin’s hands against his.

“How I’ve always looked at you,” Jeongin says hoarsely, tenor like he’s repeating himself. He does not think he could say anything else.

It’s enough, though. He sees it in the creasing of Hyunjin’s eyes, in the sweet little smirk cradled by his cheek. And then Hyunjin turns, and whisks his way out the door, and Jeongin lifts his coffee to his lips and tastes Hyunjin, or vice versa, his head a muddled floodplain of a thing but – nice. Sweet. Like fertile ground for planting something new.

He says goodbye to Changbin, suffers through the hair-ruffle and suffers less so through the kiss he demands in return, and drifts out the door himself a few minutes later, feeling sort of – hazy. Dreamlike, not as though Jeongin is dreaming but as though someone else is and he’s only a part of it, a symbol, could melt into someone else in the space of a blink. Like the borders between him and the rest of the world have gone blurry. It’s sort of lovely, to pick his way along the street sipping on his coffee and watch the sunlight feather the streets and think, We’re not all so different. Even masked and hooded to hide his face, it’s lovely. Maybe the repeated orgasms are addling his brain, making him sappy. He’s – certainly not really had sex this many days in a row, before.

He lets himself into the apartment building and catches sight of his own reflection in the mirrored walls of the elevator, hesitating. He looks the same as he did a week ago. Maybe a little more tired, dark circles more pronounced, and hair a little messier. Longer. But still… still himself.

His phone buzzes thrice, in quick succession. He swipes away the first message, something from Changbin asking about Hyunjin. But the other two are from Seungmin.

08.24 am [ seungmeong ] Jeonginnie

08.24 am [ seungmeong ] Lets hang out today

It isn’t really a question. Jeongin meets his own gaze in the reflection of the elevator again. He can invite Seungmin over later, can force him to play Overwatch, or something. And possibly pay for dinner, if Seungmin is so desperate to be in his company. He thinks again, briefly, about Hyunjin, and about Changbin, about Felix. And thinks, yeah. It’s all starting to come together.

Jeongin is not being weird about it. He isn’t.

The thing is: the apartment he shares with Chan is transformed. He looks at it and thinks, there’s where Changbin kissed me, there’s where Chan stood as he looked at me with want in his eyes. There’s where Jisung sucked me off in the entryway because he couldn’t wait two minutes longer to get inside. His blood boils with it, the sensation of everything being slightly re-made, like it’s unravelled just enough for him to catch sight of the strands that make it up; something itches underneath his skin, demanding, insistent. 

Chan is making something in the kitchen that could be either breakfast or lunch, a great plate of eggs and bacon and sausages and tomatoes and mushrooms that Jeongin thinks he saw Felix buy once in Sydney and fail to finish, and he looks up at Jeongin and flushes red when he sees him. Unsubtle. Uncomfortable. “Hi, hyung,” Jeongin says, feels more than hears his voice crack because his blood is pounding loud in his skull, and tries not to look at Chan more than is strictly necessary for his health.

The stupid tank top. The stupid too-tight sweatpants. Jeongin’s stupid want, coursing through him like it wants to unmake this too.

Chan smiles a little, subtle, just the corners of his lips and the apples of his cheeks filling out. “Jeonginnie. Where’d you go so early today?”

“Did I wake you?” Jeongin asks, waiting for Chan’s hum of disagreement. “I, um. I just went to see Hyunjin.”

“At seven thirty in the morning?” Chan’s teasing, voice light, looking at Jeongin across the kitchen like there isn’t an ocean spread wide between them, like there’s just more of a stream. He sits at the kitchen table with his plate, and nudges the chair opposite him out too. For Jeongin.

“I just needed to talk to him,” Jeongin says, and sits, and blushes. He did talk to Hyunjin. There was also a lot of… not-talking. “He had a schedule.” He feels squishy around the edges, uncertain – the lines fluid where they ought be, if not obvious, at least steady. Reliable. He doesn’t know what he can and can’t say. Chan blinks at him, steady and unbothered, and pokes the chair again with his toe as if to remind Jeongin it’s there; Jeongin stumbles into it, awkward, clumsy, and looks at Chan’s plate to avoid looking at his face.

He’s always liked Chan’s hands. Here, now, wound-up and still faintly warm from the kissing, Jeongin looks at the spidery veins of them and thinks, I want –

“Fair enough,” Chan says, fond. “You’re not busy today, yeah?”

“Um. Not really.” Jeongin has something he needs to e-sign, sitting in his emails because he’s been forgetting about it over and over, some brand partnership the company’s legal team has already dissected and rebuilt from the ground up; he has a gym program from their coach, so he needs to do that at some point. But his time is his own to manage. “Seungmin-hyung wanted to hang out. Why?”

Chan shrugs; Jeongin sees the movement in his periphery, and knows the shape of it without having to look at it on the full – these mannerisms, the way his hyungs move through the world, sit easily in his bones. “Just curious.” Jeongin risks a glance upwards and sees Chan’s eyes lingering on the splay of Jeongin’s shoulders. “You going to the gym?”

“Maybe,” Jeongin allows. He probably should. Chan’s voice had wavered a little, when he asked, like he’d been trying to ask something else. Jeongin isn’t sure how to dissect it. Not here, not like this. “Are… are you?”

“Mm, maybe,” Chan echoes. “Maybe with Hannie. We’ll do shoulders.”

Jeongin thinks, briefly, about the state of Chan and Jisung’s shoulders currently. Thinks that neither of them need to be doing anything else to them. He looks at Chan’s now, skin soft in the morning light, peach fuzz, the pull of his tendons beneath his skin. The ripple of muscle where it meets bone. Oh, God. “Sounds fun,” he chokes out, hoping he sounds normal and adjusted and not – not like he could spontaneously combust.

Chan’s foot brushes against his under the table. Maybe they need a bigger table, Jeongin thinks. Definitely. “You okay?”

“Mhm,” Jeongin says. Chan should put a jacket on, or something. Anything. “Aren’t you cold?”

“Oh, nah. I’m fine.” Chan’s grin is sweet enough that something clenches in Jeongin’s chest; the problem is, of course, that he’s so hard to stay angry at. Sulking in his presence feels like a wasted opportunity, when smiling around him drags that low blooming warmth through Jeongin’s entire body and always has, when it had felt like safety to laugh under Chan’s watchful eye when Jeongin was just a kid away from home. Chan’s shoulders, now, bare, are obscene. Jeongin wants to bite them. He kind of despises Chan for drawing attention to them. “Why? Are you, Iyennie?”

“No,” Jeongin says, too quickly. 

“I can flick on the central heating.” Chan stands from the table, and Jeongin breathes very slowly, gently, through his nose. He can definitely see the outline of Chan’s cock. Which is a normal roommate thing. Jeongin is usually so good about being fine and normal about it; the problem is, of course, that the past few days have been a series of dams breaking, and Jeongin doesn’t even know which particular one is to blame for the current of want rumbling through him. Accepting that he wants? Accepting that he’s allowed? Accepting that Chan might, sometimes, want him too? He makes a pathetic little sound into the kitchen table.

“No, it’s fine,” Jeongin says, as quickly as he can but still a beat too late. Or – maybe it’s not fine. If Chan goes to put the heating on, he won’t be standing directly opposite Jeongin anymore. Maybe that’s better. If he wants to meet Chan’s eyes, he’ll have to look up, will have to peer at him from beneath his lashes, will have to ignore the fire it stokes in the pit of his stomach to look at Chan like this. He needs Chan to sit back down. Anything to get Chan to sit back down again. “Um. It’s fine. Just… eat your food.”

Chan’s eyebrow quirks, but he sits down anyway. And then kind of slumps a little in his chair, all his bravado gone. He picks up his fork again, but doesn’t take another bite. He pushes a mushroom around the plate. “You should go get a jumper if you’re cold, though. I don’t want you to get sick.”

“I’m not cold,” Jeongin says, feeling possibly hotter than he’s ever felt in his life. “Don’t worry about me, Chan-hyung.”

“It’s my job to worry,” Chan says, off-handedly, almost listless. He blinks at his plate. Jeongin realises abruptly, now that Chan is looking away from him and Jeongin is faced with his side profile, that the tips of Chan’s ears are blush-red – not quite burning, but certainly warm. It seems almost – strange, for a second. Then it occurs to Jeongin, in the part of him that feels made anew, bold, that – Jeongin, too, is wearing a sleeveless shirt. 

Hm. A hypothesis worth exploring.

Jeongin, still feeling faintly lightheaded from his (admittedly) daily dose of pretending not to look at Chan’s dick print, stretches upwards in his chair, feels his spine click as he drags his arms above his head in a very inefficient stretch; Chan’s eyes jump immediately to his deltoids, and the pleased little noise that slips free of his chest is not entirely feigned, even if it comes out breathier than he otherwise might have been aiming for.

“Maybe I will go to the gym after all,” he says. He’s not really stretching, at all, but he flexes his biceps above his head and watches the flush in Chan’s ears spread down to his cheeks, too. “The PTs gave me a new pilates regime to try. To help my flexibility,” Jeongin says, and then pauses for the few seconds it takes to watch Chan’s blush increase. “You know, for performances.”

“Right,” Chan says, sounding a little out of breath, still watching the contraction of Jeongin’s muscles. “For performances.”

“Maybe I’ll ask Felix to come with me,” Jeongin continues. Wonders how far he can push this. “Some of the positions might be hard to get into on my own. Hyung, what time will you be going later?”

Chan swallows. Jeongin watches the bob of his throat, unable to look away. “Um. You know, I don’t think I’ll go today, actually. I have… a lot of work to do. Like, music. And stuff.”

“Ah,” Jeongin says. He quirks one brow, very deliberate; it’s fun to play at confidence like this, more than anything else, fills him with a sort of gleeful joy that swims in his blood. “Shame.”

He watches Chan put it together, piece by piece: the way his ears flush darker, and then something works its way across his lips, faintly troubled, and then he glances sideways to look at Jeongin properly for a blistering moment before almost flinching away to look – anywhere else. It ends up being back at his plate. Jeongin settles back into his chair, feeling a little smug – he knows what men look like when they want something, has fucked enough guys to know his own angles, and besides, he knows what Chan looks like when he wants something. It’s gratifying to be proved right. Less gratifying, though, is the misgiving that writes itself in the way Chan’s posture hunches, making himself smaller.

“Hyung,” Jeongin says, a beat too late, concerned.

Chan stands abruptly, shoving in the chair with a little more force than he needs to, his laugh an awkward bristle of a thing. Hurried, and something caged. “Sorry, Jeongin-ah, I… um, I forgot something at the studio. I have to – I have to go. I’ll see you later, okay?”

He leaves before Jeongin can even speak up in protest, disappearing into the hallway and clattering about with his shoes, a jacket. The front door slams before Jeongin even thinks about getting up. He looks at Chan’s plate, mostly empty, still on the table. Thinks about – having things. And things being taken away. But mostly about having them, about having Chan ; about being so close, enough to touch, to brush his fingers against before something wrenches them apart again. Fuck.

His phone vibrates again, and he snatches it up quickly enough that his mother would be tutting at him about kids and phones and something else equally disparaging; his knuckles pale a little around the case. It feels, oddly, like a lifeline.

08.41 am [ seungmeong ] Come to Minho-hyung’s later

08.42 am [ seungmeong ] He’ll pay for food 😈

08.43 am [ Yang Jeongin ] is chan hyung always this fucking stupid

08.43 am [ seungmeong ] yeah

08.43 am [ seungmeong ] Oh you’re struggling huh

08.43 am [ seungmeong ] Calendar says the dick appointment will have concluded by 10 so you’re probably safe to aim for 10.30. Hyung has budae jjigae in the fridge

Jeongin does not question why it sounds like Seungmin is already at Minho and Jisung’s apartment if there is a, quote, dick appointment occurring; he thinks the information would probably make him want to throw a tantrum and doesn’t quite like thinking the word tantrum in such close succession to trying and failing to seduce the leader of his band. Instead, he sends Seungmin a thumbs-up emoji in reply, trying to pretend he’s not sulking, and stands from the table. A little wobbly around the edges, maybe, but he can make himself useful. He covers Chan’s half-finished breakfast in cling film and puts it in the fridge, then wipes down the table with a damp cloth, thinking, Stupid, stupid. He’d just thought – that something was different, maybe. That something might have changed.

Petulant, he takes a second to work out the timing in his head and ducks into his bedroom to change into gym clothes. The gym in their apartment building is less well-equipped than the fancy company one, but it’ll do, and Jeongin just wants to lose himself in his body for long enough to not act like a sulking kid when he hangs out with Seungmin – who has never quite treated him like a child, in all the years, but instead handles Jeongin with a sort of delicate bossiness that seems to demand Jeongin not rise to his bait. Jeongin nearly picks his only sleeveless workout shirt, just to make some sort of a point, but catches sight of himself in the mirror and can’t quite muster the courage to wear it out of the apartment. Instead, he tugs on one of his looser t-shirts and drags himself out of the door.

He sleeps in sleeveless shirts. Not because he thinks Chan doesn’t look at him, he realises, because part of him has known for a very long time the way Chan’s eyes linger, the part of him that watches, idly catalogues, occasionally startles Felix or Seungmin by volunteering gossip they had no idea he also knew – but because Jeongin has never minded Chan looking at him. Easy, uncomplicated, to be wanted in such a way. Familiar, to have Chan’s eyes linger a little too long before they skittered guiltily away. He doesn’t remember when Chan started looking. Only that it was long enough ago for it to feel natural, when they moved in together, for Jeongin to wrap a towel around his waist and feel faintly pleased, still steam-pink from the shower, when Chan made a strange little strangled sound at seeing him.

So much for easy. Jeongin resists the urge to flounce, sets himself up for split squats and hip thrusts with the briefest, fleeting thought that Seungmin will laugh at him when he shows up on wobbly legs, and settles into the current of strain, the rhythm. He used to hate the gym, hated feeling uncoordinated, hated looking out of place. It’s easier now. He feels settled enough in himself not to care if people are looking at him. 

Part of it is that this is his job. In the loosest sense of the word, maybe. But the fact remains: he gets paid to look good, and paid to be looked at. The kind of observation that settles on top of his skin, thick, powdered down. Not the way Chan looks, the way any of them do, at him, burrowed beneath his flesh, invasive, and no less welcome for it. He works through the reps with a steadfast kind of resoluteness. The routine is good, and familiar, and the ache it sets in his muscles is too. No less welcome.

The time here passes easily, and without much fanfare. Jeongin’s phone buzzes a few more times, and he doesn’t check it until he’s worked through his program in its entirety. The same old messages – that is, reels from Hyunjin and Tiktoks from Felix, and a flirty sticker from Minho. Nothing, conspicuously, from Chan. Not that Jeongin is looking for that. Because he isn’t.

On my way, he texts to Seungmin rather than to Minho, then drags himself upstairs again to shower. His skin flushes pink with the steam, like it’s peeled him raw; as he dresses, he chooses ratty old clothes for comfort rather than fashion, because to do anything else would be to open himself up to Seungmin’s vicious mocking and Jeongin doesn’t actually know if he can handle that today. (Seungmin would, of course, hold his tongue if Jeongin asked him to. The asking would flay him more raw than even the scalding shower.) Chan does not come back. Jeongin thinks of asking Seungmin or Minho, with their colour-coded calendars and access to the schedules of everyone in the group, whether Chan was actually busy; whether this was one of his rare days off and Jeongin has ruined it for him. Then, frustrated, he swallows away the urge. He didn’t exile Chan from their apartment.

Still, he texts Chan: I’ll be at Minho-hyung’s and Jisung-hyung’s if you’re looking for me. Or if you’re looking to avoid me, he doesn’t add. Whatever.

It goes unsaid. By the time he gets to Minho’s, his message to Chan remains unread, and that’s fine. Jeongin slides his phone into the pocket of his joggers and knocks on Minho and Jisung’s door; wonders, briefly, if he’s stepping on any toes being here, and then banishes the thought when Seungmin answers and drags him inside.

“Good,” Seungmin says, “you’re here,” as if they’ve been waiting for him to turn up. Minho is already sat in the corner of their sofa, knees drawn up to his chest. If it were anyone else, Jeongin thinks, the position would make them look small. Minho just looks like himself. The TV is switched on, but only to a screensaver, and no one seems to be particularly watching it. Seungmin pushes him down on the sofa next to Minho. 

Jeongin’s gaze shifts, briefly, floating around the apartment. The door off into the kitchen, and the bathroom, and Minho’s room, left open and revealing something familiar, and then – Jisung’s. Door firmly shut. Jeongin tears his gaze away. Maybe he’s out. At the gym, with Chan, or something.

“Yah, maknae-yah,” Minho’s voice, cutting through. “At least pay attention to your hosts. Hm? Kim Seungmin said you were sulking.”

Well. That’s mildly humiliating, but, Jeongin supposes, no less so than coming his brains out in a sort-of-public practice room because Minho called him a slut, so. He has to prioritise a little bit. Keep things in perspective. “Hosts,” he says, raising an eyebrow. “Seungmin-hyung doesn’t live here.”

“You don’t know that,” Seungmin says.

Jeongin blinks at him. “I’m. I? I most certainly do know that.”

“I received a text from JYP himself,” Seungmin says primly. “I’m moving here. For reasons.”

Jeongin huffs, feeling amusement uncurl itself through his limbs, and settles more relaxed into the sofa. “You’re so full of shit, hyung,” he says, glancing over at Minho again; he, too, looks gentler around the edges than he might otherwise allow, watching Jeongin and Seungmin with a little half-smile. Softer. Post-coital, probably, Jeongin thinks, which might be a little unfair if it weren’t for the fact that it was also definitely true. 

“Don’t talk to your elders like that,” Seungmin informs him, tucking his feet underneath him and curling all of his limbs up into himself.

“Yes, ahjussi,” Jeongin says, respectfully. And then feels something warm bubble up inside him when Minho laughs, soft and under his breath. “I’m not sulking, anyway.”

Seungmin and Minho exchange a look. Jeongin hates when they do this, usually, because it never bodes well for any of them. Seungmin and Minho are usually on the same page about things, but they never tend to admit it. Unless they plan to do something about it. “Right,” Seungmin says, business as usual. “Okay. So did you get the files Chan-hyung sent out earlier? There’s some guide tracks we have to learn soon.”

Minho hums. “I did. Changbinnie said Chan-ah’s been working so hard on them, recently. He’s going to need a break soon.”

So Jeongin knows what they’re doing. He looks between them, feeling caught in the middle in a way he can’t bring himself to hate. Seungmin rattles off some other anecdote about Chan, and Minho responds in kind, and Jeongin contemplates throwing something at them both.

“You’re not subtle,” he says, instead, very aware of how petulant he sounds. 

“Hm?” Minho blinks at him, once, twice, three times. “What do you mean, Jeonginnie?”

Jeongin is torn between the urge to strangle one or both of them, provoke one or both of them into strangling him (despairing), or provoke one or both of them into strangling him (horny). There’s an unsubtle satisfaction in the way Minho is holding himself, curled in a small pleased shape on the sofa; Seungmin, too, has a knowing glimmer to his eye. More so than usual. So Jeongin rubs at his eyes, feels the fight go out of him. “Chan-hyung,” he says, and it comes out sounding childish in a different way: less mulish like a kid who hasn’t got his way, but uncertain, tender, seeking reassurance. A fun new blossom of humiliation. “He. I caught him looking at me and he freaked out.”

“Looking?” Seungmin says, altogether too gleeful.

“Chan looks at all of us,” Minho says, easily, as if there is not anything particular to note here. Jeongin flounders; they’re not subtle. Minho is trying to reach down his throat and pull all the words back up, to make Jeongin say it in his own voice, even though they all three know what he’ll say. “He’s always looking at us.”

“Not like – hyung, you know what I mean,” Jeongin tries. He doesn’t know what words he would put to it in the first place. I flexed a little too hard in front of my roommate and it gave him such a crisis, he had to storm out of the flat. Or, I kept staring at my roommate’s dick and I think he noticed. Or, Chan-hyung keeps looking at me, and I don’t know what he’s seeing there . 

Me, maybe. Maybe not.

“Communication is good for you,” Seungmin says lightly. He’s scrolling on his phone, not even looking at Jeongin. Still, Jeongin feels the inherent humiliation of it come creeping over his skin, the way they know him, understand him, so effortlessly and without remorse.

“I will smother you with a pillow in your sleep,” Jeongin tells him. And then, ducking his head, “Hyungnim.”

Minho snorts an unflattering laugh, one that squeaks oddly in his chest the way he only ever lets himself do off-camera; Jeongin loves it so much his own chest aches a little. Or maybe it’s sympathy for whatever gymnastics Minho’s poor vocal cords have performed to make that sound. He likes it when Jeongin bullies Seungmin.  

Jeongin continues, “I communicate just fine,” which – is tenuous at best, and no worse than the rest of them. All things considered. Even when Minho and Seungmin both look at him, judgemental and disbelieving. Jeongin splutters. “I do!” and then folds his arms, slouching deeper into the couch cushions. “I do. How would you try to communicate, then?”

Minho hums, the way he does when he knows none of them will like the answer. “To communicate with Chan-hyung? Or just to get his attention?”

Both, Jeongin thinks. Either. Anything. “Hyung,” he says, beseechingly. He thinks about Chan this morning, about the depth of his gaze and the way it had burned all down Jeongin’s body, and then gone remarkably cold the second Chan had left. “Hyung,” Jeongin says again, containing everything he wants to say in that word. 

Or, well. So he thinks. Minho looks at him, unimpressed, and says, “Yes?”

“ Ugh, ” Jeongin says, for the record. He’s playing up his frustration because making it into a joke turns it into something he can deal with, something bite-sized and beatable. It has the additional, unintended effect of making Jeongin feel just as small. He fidgets, says, “I. I want him to stop freaking out whenever he considers me and sex in the same sentence.”

“Chan-hyung’s just like that about sex,” Seungmin says unhelpfully. “You know, complexes.”

Minho’s eye twitches. “Not actually true, Kim Seungmin. You just encourage him.”

“Ah.” Seungmin sounds like, were he the kind of person capable of expressing guilt, he might; as it stands, he just blinks at his screen for a moment, then snickers at something on it. Minho makes a small sound that might be a genuine hiss.

“Besides,” Minho says. He uncurls a little, unfolding his legs just enough that he can poke his toe into the side of Jeongin’s thigh. “He’s not freaking out about sex.”

Jeongin draws the obvious conclusion there. His heart skips a beat, maybe, turning to something like rock in his chest, dread filling him. “He’s freaking out about me ?”

“What?” Minho sits up. His toe digs into Jeongin’s thigh again. “What, no. Well, a little bit, but not really. He’s just…”

“He likes you too much,” Seungmin says, after making a very pointed expression at Minho and the hole he’s digging. “Is all. That’s why he’s freaking out.”

“So he’s freaking out about me,” Jeongin says.

“He’s freaking out about the idea of you,” Seungmin corrects, with the sort of voice that makes it sound like he knows he’s right and doesn’t expect to be corrected on it any time soon.

“What the hell are you talking about?” asks Jeongin. His heart hasn’t quite started beating back in time yet. He had – thought this would be simple, somehow. Come and eat soup and lie on the couch and get in some good old-fashioned bitching and whining. Instead, Seungmin has his shoulders hunched in a familiar, stubborn sort of way, and Minho has a sort of look in his eye like he’d rather be talking about anything else, which in combination with each other do sort of mean that Jeongin is doomed to, well. Actually talking about it.

Minho winces. Says, like pulling teeth, “You know. He gets in his head. Tells himself – very specific narratives about who people are, what they want, how they want it, and then lives by them even if it’s like walking headfirst into a brick wall.” 

“That’s a bad analogy,” Seungmin says cheerfully.

“You’re a bad analogy, Kim Seungmin.”

Jeongin can see how the next minute will play out before it even happens – Seungmin will drag the couch cushion from behind himself and launch himself across the sofa in order to throw the pillow at Minho with as much velocity as is humanly possible. Someone will get hurt, likely to be Jeongin, caught in the wrong place at the wrong time. Something might get broken or spilled, likely to be Seungmin’s phone, or his cup of water on the coffee table. Jeongin will end up in the line of fire, stuck in between the two of them. Story of his fucking life.

He gets his arms around Seungmin’s shoulders before anyone can move, and pulls Seungmin back into an fairly unwilling hug. Something both of them relax into after a second. “Hyung,” Jeongin says, addressing Minho over Seungmin’s head, “how do I get him to stop?”

“Make him so horny about the thing he’s refusing to accept that it overpowers his higher reasoning facilities,” Seungmin offers.

Jeongin turns pleading eyes on Minho, who’s pinching the bridge of his nose. After a second, like he’s in pain, Minho admits, “Okay, so that did actually – work. Once. But.”

“Jesus fucking Christ,” Jeongin says. To think he wanted to be a priest.

“It wasn’t a suggestion, ” Minho says, wrinkling his nose, like he’s disgusted he actually has to clarify that. Jeongin feels torn between laughter and a shrivelling, guilty sensation in his chest; it feels dirty to talk about Chan behind his back, always has, when he knows how much weight Chan puts on his reputation, how heavily gossip weighs on his shoulders. But he’s – tired. Hates the tangle he’s wound himself into, just by stepping over a line he thought he’d never cross. Jeongin wants this to be over.

He doesn’t want to go back to how it was. But surely there’s another shape here, another constellation the eight of them can form, that will settle more comfortably than the last? 

Seungmin wiggles his shoulders beneath Jeongin’s arms. “Maybe it should be.”

“What.” Minho narrows his eyes at Seungmin.

“Maybe it should be a suggestion,” is all Seungmin says. He shifts again in Jeongin’s grip, moving enough that he can sit up properly whilst still remaining close. “Jeonginnie, make Chan so insufferably horny that he has no other choice but to fuck you nasty.”

“Seungmin, do you really have to,” Minho says, long suffering.

Jeongin, at least, tries to ignore the throbbing stab of heat in his gut at the thought. “I’m not… I couldn’t do that.”

“Why not?” is all Seungmin says. “Ayennie, you’re hot as hell. Chan doesn’t know what he’s missing.”

“What do you mean why not, ” Jeongin says, feeling the bitterness worm its way into his tone. “I don’t – I shouldn’t be making him uncomfortable. I just.” His chest is so full of cut thread, cottony and snarled between his ribs. He wants Chan to want him. He wants Chan to relax. He wants, of course, Chan’s body pressed against his, wants to drag his tongue over Chan’s chest, wants to find out what sounds Chan would make if Jeongin touched his cock – who wouldn’t? – but it’s almost secondary. Should be secondary. To. Uh.

Jeongin squirms in his seat. He’s lost his train of thought.

Minho looks at him with a sort of level misgiving, worrying the inside of his cheek with his teeth for a moment; he says, quietly serious, “Jeongin-ah. You want him. He wants you.” A beat of hesitance. “Right?”

“Yes,” Jeongin says, then winces, says, “I think so. I mean. I definitely want him. ”

“We know,” Seungmin says. “‘We’ meaning anyone with eyes. Probably doesn’t help that I was sitting in your lap when you started thinking about what Chan-hyung would be like in bed.”

“How did you know I –” Jeongin splutters, incensed, flushed, and then bites his tongue.

It’s nothing Seungmin hasn’t seen before. Felt before. The humiliation simmers, low in Jeongin’s stomach. Minho just looks at him; clinically, almost, at both of them, like he wants to know more but dares not to ask.

“Either way,” Seungmin continues, “you’re both as bad as each other. Chan isn’t subtle, either. Trust me, whatever you do, he won’t be uncomfortable.”

Well, Jeongin thinks. Chan hasn’t been exactly comfortable, so far, it seems. He grimaces. “I don’t know. I don’t want to… he just… if he doesn’t want me, it’ll be fine.”

“There is not a single universe in existence where Chan-hyung doesn’t want you,” Seungmin says. “I would bet money on it.”

Jeongin swallows the urge to say you did , figures that that goes without saying. “I don’t want to mess up the group.”

“Jeonginnie,” Minho says, softly. His fingers twitch, like he wants to reach over and brush the hair out of Jeongin’s face, smooth his hands over Jeongin’s cheeks. “You’re not going to mess anything up. Not at all.”

“But it’ll be –” actually, Jeongin thinks, if he makes a move on Chan and Chan rejects him, he’ll have to leave the group immediately and go live in some primitive camp deep in a rainforest, with no phone signal or internet or any way of receiving visitors and never speak to any of them again. Awkward doesn’t quite cover it.

Minho’s lips thin. “Jeonginnie, I prefer it when you don’t make a habit out of being avoidably dense. I get enough of that from the idiot I live with.” He unfolds himself from the far couch and comes to hover over Seungmin and Jeongin; in a quick, jerky movement, he presses a kiss to Jeongin’s brow, perfunctory like he’s trying to do it before he talks himself out of it. Then, rolling his eyes, kisses Seungmin on the forehead as well before Seungmin can complain about unequal treatment; both of them knew it would have been imminent otherwise. Jeongin closes his eyes for a long moment, breath billowing through his bones.

“Text him,” Seungmin suggests.

Jeongin does not quite understand how this is the same man who’d looked him in the eye and managed to psychically assess every kink he’d ever had. “Seungmin-hyung, I live with him.”

“So? He has to live with you,” Seungmin counters. He looks up at Minho, briefly, but Jeongin doesn’t pay attention to whatever he’s conveying. Only shudders when Minho’s hand finds a place on his shoulder, and then leans back into the touch. 

“I don’t even know what to say,” Jeongin says. He thinks about his phone, burning a hole in his pocket. “Right now? I don’t – I don’t know what to say to him.”

“Ask if he’s coming back for dinner, or something,” Minho says. His fingers squeeze gently on the curve of Jeongin’s shoulder, familiar and steady. “Ask if he wants to eat with you.”

“Ask if he wants to eat you ,” Seungmin interjects.

“I am no longer taking suggestions.”

“Oh, you were taking suggestions?” Seungmin squirms in place until he’s worked his way mostly off Jeongin’s lap and onto the couch again, leaving his thighs slung over Jeongin’s like he’s a glorified footstool. “Our Jeonginnie listens so well to his hyungs, so obedient –”

“Six months,” Jeongin grumbles.

Minho quirks a brow, effortlessly poised in that way Jeongin has always envied. “I’ve de-aged,” he observes.

Jeongin glances up at him, feels his eyes flicker over Minho and then – snag there, lingering, caught. Minho’s gaze is very soft around the edges, even when he realises Jeongin is staring at him and makes eye contact for a moment; then he glances away, lets himself be looked at. Like a river-tossed pebble, its edges worn down by the years and years of wanting. Perhaps that’s the pebble-sized lump in Jeongin’s throat. His forehead burns where Minho had kissed it. 

Of course it would feel strange, Jeongin reasons, to be wanted. But that’s not quite it. 

Seungmin makes a considering noise, low in the back of his throat, and then reaches out to tilt Jeongin’s face towards him – not to kiss or even really to touch, just rearranging Jeongin so that Seungmin can see whatever expression he’s making, an odd unsubtle mark of care that Jeongin tucks gently into the silty riverbed of his ribcage with all the others. “Jeongin,” Seungmin says, gentle, serious. “I don’t – You can always tell me to shut up, you know.” What has he seen in Jeongin’s expression, then, that’s dragged out such sincerity? How pathetic must Jeongin look? He feels cracked open, like a geode dug from dry earth with its guts on display, and reaches habitually for irritation in response – but Minho looks at him again, so gently, that the edge of it feels blunted.

Christ, Jeongin has been so changed.  

“I know,” he mumbles. “I. Sorry. There’s a lot happening in, uh – with everything.”

It’s not being wanted that has changed him, he thinks. It’s being had. A hundred ways of being theirs, always theirs, always unspoken – and so of course he had bitten back when Changbin and Hyunjin had tried to call it nothing, of course he had flinched when Jisung had said it didn’t count, didn’t matter, because it always had. It was always going to. Jeongin has been theirs for so long he has forgotten they don’t know it too; he’s never needed to say it.

Or. Maybe he’s always needed to say it, and hadn’t anyway.

“Hyung,” he says, hoarse. Then clarifies: “Minho-hyung. Seungmin-hyung.” He dredges it up from the riverbed: “Thank you. I’m – you’ve always been so good to me. You know I – care, too. I do.”

Seungmin and Minho look at him with almost identical expressions: sort of like they’re loading, with parted lips. Then Minho says, “Aish, aegi-ya, you really chose the wrong two if you wanted emotional vulnerability. Hm?” He leans down again and, this time, the kiss is to Jeongin’s lips, though it’s chaster than anything he’d shared with Hyunjin that morning, close-mouthed. “Text Channie. A factory reset would do him good.”

“And it would be really funny,” Seungmin adds. His voice sounds – a little wobbly, like he’s holding something back. Jeongin reaches out and takes his hand; after a moment, Seungmin’s knobbly fingers work themselves in between his own, interlaced.

Tangled, again. But Jeongin doesn’t think he minds.

He texts Chan, a little further into the afternoon, under Minho’s careful supervision and all of Seungmin’s suggestions going ignored (‘Ask him if he’s hungry, and then send him a photo of your ass.’ And then Minho, smacking him upside the head: ‘who the hell would that even work on?’ And Seungmin, satisfied, smug, like he was waiting for someone to ask, ‘Seo Changbin.’). Minho had had to press send for him, after all, and then Jeongin had tossed his phone to the other side of the couch and buried his face in his hands.

“You know, he probably won’t even pick up that you were trying to flirt with him,” Seungmin says, which is not what Jeongin wants to hear. Minho makes to smack him again, but Jeongin practically throws himself into Minho’s arms before he can quite get there, pressing him into the cushions.

Minho’s arms close around him automatically, hands fitting around Jeongin’s waist. He settles for scolding Seungmin instead, “yah, stupid dog, don’t say that. He’ll know. Trust me. You trust me, don’t you, Ayen-ah?”

Jeongin finds himself hard-pressed not to. He wriggles in Minho’s grip, thinks about his phone on the other side of the sofa. He’d sent Chan something – fairly innocent. Chan-hyung, with a cute emoji after it. How’s your music going? If Chan even remembers their conversation earlier. And a photo attached, a selfie, with his hair mussed up courtesy of Seungmin, and his lips parted just slightly, showing the tops of his shoulders and the curve of his throat. And then, Minho, stood behind him, with his hand curling around Jeongin’s neck, fingertips brushing over the dip of his collarbones. Enough of him visible to be identifiably Minho, but nothing explicitly. And then, one more text, courtesy of Minho: I’m having fun with hyung. 

Deliberately vague, non-specific. Jeongin isn’t sure how he’s supposed to go home now, how he’s meant to face Chan after this. But that’s – whatever. For now, he can let Minho and Seungmin touch him, gently and restrained, comforting. Someone puts some drama on, something about love and happiness, the kind of thing Hyunjin would watch. And Jeongin tries his best to put everything else out of his mind.

04.53 pm [ channie hyung ] fuck

04.58 pm [ channie hyung ] shit, jeonginnie

(“He’s been typing for like ten minutes,” Seungmin relays, staring at Jeongin’s phone with wide eyes. “Oh – he just finished typing.”)

05.11 pm [ channie hyung ] what kind of fun, baby?
 

Chapter Text

“What do I even – say,” Jeongin reaches out to snatch his phone back from Seungmin, rereading Chan’s message with his own eyes. Seungmin doesn’t even resist, just lets him take, and. Yep. Those are words that Chan typed. And sent, for Jeongin to read. Chan called him baby.  

Minho raises one eyebrow, very slowly, laden with judgement. Jeongin can still feel the ghost of Minho’s touch, around his throat, but also – Minho’s hands on his chest, spreading his legs in front of the practice room mirrors, Minho’s touch across his thighs, his stomach, his cock. “What do you think you should say to him, Jeongin-ah?”

Seungmin is still right there, seeming happy to watch. Jeongin barely even glances at him; still, at once, the room seems to shrink a little. Claustrophobia lives in the tiny box of his phone, and inside it blinks Chan’s messages. What kind of fun, baby? Jeongin knows Chan’s voice so well that it’s effortless to fit it to the words, and it spins up and through his body, the words, the sounds, the sweetness. It’s too big and too small to be nestled in his chest the way it is, his belly – desire, a liquid thing that spills outwards to fill the shape of its vessel, and this time it takes the form of Chan’s voice in Jeongin’s ears.

Seungmin makes an amused little noise. “What, you like that he said baby, Innie? That’s nothing –”

“Kim Seungmin,” Minho says, quick and clipped. “Unhelpful.”

“No, it’s –” Jeongin feels himself fumbling for words. Like he’s rearranging himself around this knowledge – that Chan wants him enough to say it, even if it’s only over text. Jeongin’s mind unmakes itself to fit. Reconstitutes itself in the shape of – want, or affection, or something along the lines of so incoherently horny that Jeongin cannot quite string two words together. All of them at once.

“You know he’s stewing,” Minho says, riverbed-dry, the jagged cracks in it fondness-filled. “Don’t leave him on read too long, hm, Jeonginnie? Doesn’t have to be perfect.”

“I.” Jeongin swallows. “I think I am going to. Go.”

Seungmin is laughing. “Go where, Ayennie?” he chirps, even though Jeongin knows they both know what he means: he’s going home. Where he will be able to… flirt with Chan in peace. Jeongin doesn’t bother to address his words.

“I’ll see you later, hyung,” he says, standing up from the couch, feeling a little like he’s in a dream, and putting his shoes on by rote. Minho just watches him do it. “Seungmin. Thank you,” he says, stilted. Baby. Baby, baby, baby. “For all your help.” He pauses, amends, “At least for some of it.”

Seungmin’s laughter follows him out the door, but Minho’s small, gentle smile sticks in his mind: uncharacteristically sweet, like he knows what’s going on, what’s going through Jeongin’s head. Jeongin tries not to think about it too hard; he leaves Minho in his own apartment, and goes back to the one he shares with Chan. Chan. Jeongin texts him back: I’m going home now. When are you coming back tonight?

And then waits thirty seconds before sending another. I’ll tell you about the fun we had, hyung.

Chan doesn’t reply again until Jeongin makes it up to their apartment, into his room, door left just slightly ajar so he can hear if someone else unlocks the front door. Chan isn’t back yet, but that doesn’t mean he won’t be soon. Necessarily. Jeongin hopes.

05.46 pm [ channie hyung ] Technically I need to finish this…

05.48 pm [ channie hyung ] I’m

05.48 pm [ channie hyung ] kind of distracted

Jeongin, sprawled on his bed watching a typing bubble appear and disappear as he texts a pretty boy, feels distinctly teenaged. It’s not as humiliating as it might have been a week ago. Instead, the implication – Chan’s implication – is intoxicating, the idea that looking at Jeongin, wanting Jeongin, is enough to distract him. Jeongin rolls onto his back and blinks hard at his ceiling. He feels made of sparks, alight, alive.

05.49 pm [ jeonginnie ] yeah?

05.53 pm [ channie hyung ] Wouldn’t you be, aegi-ya?

Jeongin inhales sharply. He focuses his gaze on one of the small pock marks on his ceiling, indented from when they first moved in, when he and Chan had tried to move Jeongin’s closet in here without damaging anything. Chan had lifted it up too high by accident. Jeongin can still see Chan’s hand in his mind’s eye, knuckles white, veins popping, grip tight around the wood. Ah, fuck.

05.54 pm [ jeonginnie ] wouldn’t i be what?

05.55 pm [ channie hyung ] Distracted

05.55 pm [ channie hyung ] If you had a pretty boy texting you while you were trying to work

Oh, he thinks he’s so fucking slick. He thinks he’s so cool, Jeongin appraises, almost incensed by how much it’s actually working. Listen: Jeongin has standards, okay – but Chan has been the exception to every rule since Jeongin first met him, fifteen and starry-eyed and still with his braces and utterly enamoured by Chan who, at twenty, had seemed so world-wise. So confident. Maybe too confident, Jeongin wants to gripe, chewing the nail of his free hand to the quick – but he thinks of Chan, in the studio, his Chan-hyung, twenty-seven and probably still blushing. That softens the edge of it a little. Jeongin white-knuckles his phone, thinks, Pretty boy, pretty boy, pretty boy.

There, again, go the lines in the sand. The mouth of the river makes and remakes islands every tide, the eddies of silt ephemeral; the only thing that stays is the way nothing stays the same.

Chan must have been nervous to send that. Jeongin knows him well enough, at least, to be certain of that one thing.

05.57 pm [ jeonginnie ] i wouldnt know

05.57 pm [ jeonginnie ] you never text me when im working :/

05.58 pm [ channie hyung ] Is that what you want?

Jeongin hears it in his voice; everything Chan does is so visceral, parts of himself strung along through every single thing he does. He can imagine it now, even, the way Chan would sit across from him, legs crossed at the ankles but his arms spread, palms open. The way Chan’s eyes would rove over him, greedy, looking at Jeongin like he thinks it’s the best he can do.

05.58 pm [ channie hyung ] For me to distract you?

Chan’s eyes, half lidded and dark. The curl of his lip, the bite of his teeth. Jeongin looks at his desk, at the chair Chan had helped him carry up through the elevator into his room. Thinks about Chan sitting there, now. How his throat would bob and flex, how he would grip onto his own knee, knuckles white and tendons flexed, how he’d watch Jeongin on his bed.

Thinks about Chan’s spidery fingers, the elegant lines of his knobbly hands. About Chan wanting to touch him.

05.59 pm [ jeonginnie ] i want

05.59 pm [ jeonginnie ] what you want, hyung

He knows it’s a cop-out. His heart feels too small and heavy for his ribcage, like a fruit over-ripening on the vine, already shrivelled before it’s ever fallen. He wishes Chan were here. Jeongin can put images to the words, can put Chan’s voice to them, but – he doesn’t know, and it’s sort of killing him. 

05.59 pm [ jeonginnie ] i want to see you 

He means come home, means come see me; he means I want to know what face you’re making when you’re sending these stupid texts. It’s sort of liminal, having and not having Chan like this – like the only way Chan can ever face up to wanting him is with enough distance that he doesn’t have to look Jeongin in the eye. The way neither of them are acknowledging the pivot, only feeling the sway of the turning point as it passes them by. Jeongin can’t blame Chan for being scared to look desire in the eye, or maybe down the throat, the gullet of the gift horse – he knows, himself, what it is to think you want things you can’t have.

His heart, that overripe fruit, swells, swells – and falls from the branch:

06.03 pm [ channie hyung ] [20241215_180259.png]

Jeongin swallows thickly. Desire coasts through him, thick like molasses. Hot and burning, embers stoked, this flash flood of arousal. This river, something carnal, wanton, flowing beyond its banks. Jeongin feels it warm in the bottom of his stomach, seeping through his body, cock slowly taking interest, catching up.

He looks at Chan’s selfie again; taken from above, high enough to force Chan’s head to tilt backwards, just his plush lips in shot, parted around his teeth. The camera follows his body down: his chest, the scoop neck of his t-shirt, stretched out with wear, enough to dip below his collarbones, stark in the light of his computer. And then further, over his stomach, his hips, his thighs, spread as far as they can in his chair. His joggers, tented just slightly, enough that Jeongin’s eyes catch. And his hand, fisted in the fabric stretched across his thigh, veins popping, the notches of bone in his wrist shadowed. 

Jeongin’s fingers hover over his keyboard. Every single thought in his head has been consumed, entirely, by Chan. It takes a second to drag his head out of the muck and silt; another to remember how words work at all.

06.04 pm [ jeonginnie ] i like your hands

He watches Chan’s typing bubble appear and disappear. Hates that it’s all he has, all there is, to gauge Chan’s reaction by – Jeongin knows Chan wants him, he isn’t stupid, but here in the dark of his room it’s hard to remember he’s not just flinging his guts into the void and hoping someone kind is the one to stumble across them. It’s harder still to remember that Chan wants him, that Chan who swallows a little too hard when Jeongin stretches and the hem of his shirt rides up is the same man who’s texting him like his voice is hoarse with desire, that the same Channie-hyung who laughs off any suggestion that he might want something is this channie hyung who calls him baby, pretty boy, had said fuck, Jeonginnie, like he couldn’t believe what he was seeing. Jeongin fists his hand into his shorts and blinks long and slow at the pock-marked plaster ceiling.

His eyes linger on the shadow of Chan’s cock, the suggestion of him. Jeongin wants him in his mouth. His hole. Whatever; he swallows hard, gazing again at the fullness of the shadow in the grainy picture. He’s seen the outline of Chan’s dick plenty of times. They’re roommates. He’s never seen it half-hard.

From texting Jeongin.

Another time, Jeongin might almost make fun of him. Right now, he kind of feels like he shouldn’t be throwing stones.

06.05 pm [ channie hyung ] Just my hands?

It’s strange, almost, to have Chan’s confidence be so tangible and yet so unreachable. He’s brave, almost, Jeongin thinks, when Chan can’t meet his eyes. Something about being… not being watched, he considers, how it’s different for them all. Jeongin thinks, briefly, about Seungmin, his greedy hands, wanting stare – how they’d both gotten off on it. And Minho, watching him in the practice room mirrors, making Jeongin see, making him watch himself, spearheaded by the heady threat of someone else watching too. 

He wonders what Chan would do – like that. With Seungmin, or Minho, forced to see. Confront. What he’d do if Jeongin stood in front of him and made him watch. Chan’s confidence grows when neither of them can do anything about it. Jeongin hates it. Mostly, he hates how aroused it makes him.

06.05 pm [ jeonginnie ] no

06.06 pm [ jeonginnie ] not just your hands, hyung

06.06 pm [ jeonginnie ] your thighs too

06.06 pm [ jeonginnie ] and your lips

Jeongin shifts in place, bites the inside of his cheek; he grabs a pillow from beside him and presses it into his lap, the pressure of it satisfying even through his clothes, just enough to make him feel less like he’s about to actually explode. It’s – unnerving, showing his hand like this. Unsettling. Putting his cards on the table. He shifts his hips against the pillow and bites back a little sound.

06.06 pm [ channie hyung ] Fuck

06.06 pm [ channie hyung ] Who taught you to talk like that, baby?

06.06 pm [ jeonginnie ] am i not allowed to list thigns now

06.06 pm [ channie hyung ] hehe no one said anything about allowed

06.06 pm [ channie hyung ] You don’t normally make typoes, Jeonginnie?

06.07 pm [ jeonginnie ] i’m

06.07 pm [ jeonginnie ] i have other things to think about

Like: pressing his hips up into the pillow, like scrolling back up to look at the photo Chan had sent again, committing it to memory, staring at it for long enough that it might burn into his retinas. Until Chan sends another text.

06.07 pm [ channie hyung ] What kind of things?

Want carves its way through him with such ferocity, Jeongin feels a little lightheaded. What is he thinking about? Chan. Nothing else, really. Chan’s face, his hands, his lips, body, mouth, voice. His eyes. His teeth, and tongue, and fingertips. The way his legs spread, thighs apart, sat in his studio. The drooping collar of his t-shirt, tantalising, teasing, like he’s doing it on purpose. 

(More than that: Chan. Who fussed over Jeongin even when he didn’t want it; who took him so gently to bed the other night after he’d curled his lip and kicked Jisung out; who made sure to grind more coffee beans if he finished what they had making his own. Chan, who had looked at Jeongin and thought, I want him on my team. Chan, years ago, days ago, over his shoulder, by his side. Chan’s coat hanging in the entryway. 

Maybe he just thinks I’m hot, Jeongin thinks for a moment, and can almost see Minho’s unimpressed expression at the thought. It’s fair; Jeongin knows better. Jeongin knows the way Chan loves them all, thinks he might have been the first, even, to fall into whatever this tangle is. Jeongin is not stupid enough to think that Chan only wants to fuck him.

But he has priorities. His dick insists, very stubbornly, that his heart can wait.)

06.08 pm [ jeonginnie ] youshould come home and i could show you :(

06.08 pm [ channie hyung ] Ahhh, Jeonginnie, I have to finish this, I promise I’m not just kidding

06.08 pm [ channie hyung ] Can I

It’s not like Chan to send a half-finished thought as its own text, to the point that Jeongin wonders whether it was on purpose. Can I –? and Jeongin’s brain supplies the sensation of shaking fingers, of Chan very diligently correcting each of his own typoes, of one palm pressed against the bulge in his joggers like he’s not in a production studio at work. (Admittedly, Jeongin no longer has any right to judge. He left that particular entitlement in the third group practice room on the left of the fourth floor of the JYP building.) Can I, and it’s Chan admitting that he wants something even if he can’t yet make himself finish it, it’s Chan trusting Jeongin with the idea that there is something Jeongin could give back to him. Could do for him.

06.08 pm [ jeonginnie ] yes

06.08 pm [ jeonginnie ] i don’t care what it is, yeah, yes, you can

06.09 pm [ channie hyung ] Maknae-yah, hasn’t anyone ever told you 

06.09 pm [ channie hyung ] Be careful who you promise things to

He can feel his heart jack-rabbiting in his chest, beating so hard Jeongin fears it might break free from his ribs and flop out onto the bed beside him. He can imagine Chan’s face, too, as he types, the way his mouth would curl up into a smirk and his eyes would furrow a little, and he’d laugh, light and a little disbelieving, and a little more derisive. And then the way it would mellow out, Chan’s eyes scrunching up, soft and gentle. Jeongin swallows.

06.10 pm [ jeonginnie ] hyung

06.10 pm [ jeonginnie ] its you

06.10 pm [ jeonginnie ] what do you want?

The sound of his ringtone knifes through his chest in a frisson of surprise, and Jeongin is startled enough that he almost throws his phone across the room, stalls his movement just in time with his arm cocked back. Jesus Christ. Chan is calling him. Chan is – Jeongin squints at the screen, trembling a little bit with something he can’t name – video calling him, wants to see him, wants to hear him – it takes Jeongin three tries to actually accept the call, his fingers unsteady. In the corner, Jeongin’s own video shows him bitten-red, mussed, too dishevelled for someone who’s just been sitting in his own bed. He wonders how Chan feels about that. Wonders where Chan’s eyes would linger, if he were here: Jeongin’s hair, or Jeongin’s lips, or the loose neckline of his own shirt –

Then Chan’s video, pixelated and grainy, resolves itself into something like an actual image, and Jeongin stops wondering. Stops thinking. Just lets himself look.

He knows, from the colour of the walls, which studio Chan’s in; it’s a silly thing to focus on, but he locks his eyes on the soundproofed background and takes several deep breaths before his eyes jitter anywhere else. Chan is wearing the stupid old tank top he favours for producing, because he thinks it’s too warm in the studios, and it clings to his chest closely enough that Jeongin is kind of jealous of a piece of clothing. He’s got the camera balanced up on the desk somewhere, is leaning in to squint at it, brow furrowed in concentration. The better to have both hands free, Jeongin thinks. His knee-jerk response is to bury the thought as deeply as he can; he is not allowed to want things, not when it comes to Chan. The thirst goes under the silt.

Then, even through the choppy pixelation of the video, he spots the dark honey in Chan’s eyes. Remembers how he got here. Chan’s mouth parts, lips shadowed a dark, bitten pink in the dim light of the studio; his face is illuminated by his computer screen, bright enough that the light floods across the highs and lows of his cheekbones, the hollow of his jaw, spilling down to drip over his collarbones. 

“Hyung,” Jeongin says, quietly, almost gasping. He blinks once, then again, and then thrice quickly, almost unable to believe that Chan is – is sitting here, with him, like this. He finds he can’t quite get his mouth to close, fully, saliva pooling on his tongue. Oh, God. If he starts drooling, he hopes his camera won’t pick it up.

Chan looks… not quite debauched, already, but close enough. Like arousal suits him, like he wears it like a second skin. Jeongin’s no stranger to this, to Chan’s latent sexuality. But it’s so… so much. To have it aimed at him, performed for him. No longer buffered by – by the fans, or the others, or a stage. Chan looks at Jeongin through the lens of his phone camera, like all of this is just for Jeongin.

Jeongin swallows. Scrabbles for words. Clumsily, too quickly, he says, “You look like you’ve already been fucked and you’ve just been sitting in your studio, hyung. What’s up with that?”

Chan flinches, wincing for a moment. Like he’s just remembered it’s Jeongin on the other end of the phone, Jeongin thinks uncharitably, and feels his lip curl; then, though, he watches the familiar bashful laughter work its way over Chan’s face, holding hands with his flushed cheeks the way his dimples always do. Emboldened, Jeongin says, “I mean, I guess those two things aren’t mutually exclusive. Minho-hyung told me –”

“ Jeongin, ” Chan says, frustrated, fond, hoarse. There’s a knot of emotion in the throaty way he breathes the name, too tight-wound to untangle; could be fear, desire, both, neither. He says Jeongin the way Jeongin says hyung: a shorthand for the storm in his stomach. Chan swallows, and Jeongin’s eyes track the pixelated bob of it on the screen. “Did you answer just to make fun of me?”

“Mm,” Jeongin considers, feels this rush of adrenaline through him. It makes him bold. “No. Not unless you want me to?”

Chan doesn’t have to say anything; his cheeks blush red, all the way up to the tips of his ears, and Jeongin gets some heady kind of rush about it. “Aish,” is what Chan does say, once Jeongin trails off, “seriously, baby, who taught you this?”

Well, Jeongin thinks. And casts his mind back over the last week. There are six names on the tip of his tongue, and he doesn’t have to say them for Chan to know what he means, because the flush in his ears gets impossibly darker.

“Never mind,” Chan says, blinking slowly, like he’s doing it on purpose to look through his lashes at the camera, like he’s innocent and sweet and harmless. Jeongin feels significantly harmed, targeted and victimised. “I know who taught you it, hm?”

“I can show you what else they taught me,” Jeongin says. He tilts his head a little, too, looks shy and demure at the camera, makes his eyes wide, lips parted just so. Like he’s in the middle of being kissed, lips aimed at the camera. For Chan. He can play this game just as well, now.

It feels almost silly for one long moment, two – and then, gratifyingly, Jeongin watches Chan exhale short and sharp through his phone screen, the way his lips part once and then just stay there – the chapped arc of them like the sandy mouth of the river, the cleft of desire between them. “Jeongin,” Chan says: reproach, apology, plea. Jeongin: name, entreaty, promise. Chan’s tongue wets his lips; Jeongin wants it on his body. He’s really not picky as to where. Chan shifts in place, abruptly so – raw, unperformative, it’s almost uncomfortable to look at him, in contrast to the self-assured current of lust that Chan had embodied only moments before. I know who taught you, hm? Now: Jeongin, throatier, unsteady. Jeongin swallows.

“Chan-hyung,” he says. “I want you to come home tonight. I want to fuck you.”

Brave, possibly. Chan’s face does a myriad of things; cycles through something like shock into desire, looking at Jeongin anew. He exhales again, and Jeongin watches the rise and fall of his shoulders, his chest. 

“You –” Chan says, and then closes his mouth. He squeezes his eyes shut, eyelashes shadowed onto his cheek. “You want that –?”

Jeongin thinks by now he’d take anything Chan wanted to give him. Any of it. Here, now, he nods slowly, letting his hair fall over his forehead, curls his lip over his teeth. “Of course I want that, hyung,” Jeongin says, figures there’s not much else he could possibly want more . “You have no idea how long I’ve wanted that.”

Chan shakes his head a little, though. “You have no idea how long I’ve wanted that,” he says, like Jeongin could not possibly understand the crushing depth of wanting, of needing, of water rising above his shoulders, drowning in it, the channel of desire, yawning wide. Like it’s something unique to him – that guilt-studded weight of it. Like Chan truly, honestly thinks he’s the only person who’s ever wanted something he thought he couldn’t have. He watches desire shadow Chan’s gaze like a dog following a scent trail, head down, padding slowly along down the dark path: inexorable. No matter the guilt, no matter the house of cards of justification, of denial, of turning one’s back – the gut wants what it wants. Soon enough, it will find a way to have it.

Jeongin wants Chan. And Chan wants him. He says, slowly, so that there is no way Chan can misinterpret him, “Good.”

Chan shifts in his chair, a little unsteady. Jeongin’s eyes dart to the shadow at his crotch – the pixelation judders, and he can’t quite make out the outline of Chan’s cock but his mind knows the shape well enough to fill it in, to send desire skittering down the long hallways of his bones. “Jeongin,” Chan says, hoarsely, “I could – I could make you feel so fucking good, baby. I’d make it good. I promise.”

“I know, hyung.”

“I’d be good to you.” Chan’s voice cracks on something earnest and insistent.

“I know,” Jeongin repeats. He watches the wrack of need in Chan’s body, tense along his shoulders. “The others all told me,” he says, and then watches carefully the way Chan’s body seems to shudder through the words. “That you’d be good. You’d make me feel good, hyung.”

Chan blinks heavily again, like he can’t bear to have his eyes open for much longer. “I – fuck, I have – work –”

“It can wait,” Jeongin says, firm. Certain. A parameter; Chan seems to hold tight to the edges of it, comforted by the sensation of being boxed in. “Give me your attention, now, hyung. It’s been… I’ve been trying to get it for a while.”

He still blinks, though, and Jeongin’s words send ripples through his entire body. Jeongin watches Chan shake them out through his phone screen, can’t tear his gaze away from it. Chan bites his lip, his tongue, teeth bright in the LED glow. “Jeonginnie, I’m –”

“You want me,” Jeongin says. He will not mince his words about this. He’s done that enough. He’s felt the shadow of shame on him enough; now he shrugs it off. “I want you. Can you just let that be enough? For a little?”

It startles some kind of panic free from Chan’s expression: his eyes flare wide and frightened, the whites showing for a moment, like he’s remembered what he is. Who he is. Jeongin wonders what that means to him: Channie-hyung, or Bang Chan, or an amorphous Chan free of suffixes or honorifics that only exists in the privacy of his own mind, the way Jeongin is only just Jeongin to himself. “Jeonginnie,” Chan says, throaty and abruptly fighting the current of it, audibly trying to compose himself, “are you sure you’ve –? I probably shouldn’t – I mean, you don’t know –”

“Hyung,” Jeongin says. He reaches for the warmth sitting sweet in his belly, next to the heat. “Hyung. Seriously. If you think that I don’t know you’re –” He muscles past the river-stone stuck in his throat, lets the force of the flood shake it loose, clear the river of its dam – “in love with me, you might have to reevaluate how good you are at pretending.” He swallows. “I know. It’s okay. I’m –” It feels presumptuous, suddenly, to say in love with me, to assume that the want goes further than Jeongin’s new-defined deltoids or the slim line of his waist – but he knows Chan. Knows what he sees each time Chan looks at him. Being wanted has made Jeongin braver, he thinks. So he says: “I want this. All of it. Anything you want.” 

“You have to stop saying anything, ” Chan rasps. His voice is very small. In the pixelated little screen, he looks so fucking tired. Jeongin wants to hold him. Wants to gather him close and let someone take care of him.

“Hyung,” Jeongin says. “Can you trust me when I say I mean it?”

Chan’s laugh is bittersweet and immediate. “How can I, Jeonginnie?” he says, then winces, like he hadn’t meant to let it slip – but once he can’t take the words back, it’s like something comes unstuck in him, too. He leans forwards towards his own phone camera, eyes dark and a little star-studded. The glints might be tears. “I’m your leader, I have industry connections –”

Jeongin doesn’t know whether to feel offended or heartbroken; it’s like his chest is trying to do both and neither at once. “Hyung –”

“– I’m your hyung, yeah, see, I’ve known you since you were fucking fifteen, and –”

“And I’m not any more –”

“– And the basis of that relationship doesn’t just fucking go away, love.” It slips out so fucking effortlessly that Jeongin feels momentarily floored. Chan doesn’t even seem to notice he’s said it. “And for all I fucking know you’ve never even been queer, I didn’t even know –”

“Why would I tell you that, hyung –”

“And I’m the kind of fucking idiot that gets hung up on love, Jeonginnie,” Chan snaps, and he sounds genuinely frustrated, his words thick with an easy, self-directed fury. Like he thinks he’s a cheap target for himself. Like he doesn’t even know he drags the rest of them down with him when he does it, Jeongin thinks, and wants to shake him. He can barely make out the lines of Chan’s expression in the phone call. “I want things you might not want to give me. And – and none of this is safe – we’ve still got the fucking bans, and you could lose your career –”

“You’re being such a fucking hypocrite right now, hyung,” Jeongin snaps, too abrupt, too cruel. It shuts Chan up, at least. “What, can I not make that decision like the rest of you? You’ve just decided that on my behalf?”

“I – that’s not what I’m –” Chan tries, at least, even when his mouth stammers over the words. 

“I don’t care about the bans,” Jeongin says, “or my – my career, or about it being safe. You’ve all been messing around for however long. And I want you. More than any of that, hyung. Please, just… let me have it.”

Something shatters and fractures across Chan’s face, light refractions in the whites of his eyes, something crumbling down behind them. Like someone cuts his strings. The next breath Chan takes in is long, and heavy, and he exhales like it takes something else with it. Like he’s giving in to it, just about it. His voice softens, and wavers a little, like it’s been carrying weight for too long. “Jeonginnie…”

The river yawns in Jeongin’s belly, its maw too big for him to hold; it matters less, right now, than the way Chan is breathing like he’s been hurt. “Chan-hyung,” Jeongin says. Chan is always so gentle with him. He tries, now, to let that gentleness settle into his own bones. People are always saying they’ve gotten more alike over the years. “You can have it, too, you know. Let yourself have it.”

Chan gives a wet-sounding chuckle, this laugh at least less acerbic than the one previous. “Fuck, Jeonginnie.” This time, the fuck is distinctly not horny; Jeongin feels a little mournful, but, he thinks, his dick can wait. There’s a different kind of want swelling in his chest. “I. I just. I don’t want to hurt you.”

“You already did,” Jeongin says, as gently as he can manage. Chan needs to hear it. He needs to say it. “But. I hurt you too. It can be done now, yeah?”

“You didn’t hurt me –”

“You’re crying, hyung.”

“For – a lot of reasons!” Chan says, even as he blinks and squeezes tears out, dripping down his face. It’s unfair, Jeongin thinks, for someone to look so beautiful while crying. “Like… you’re right –”

“Of course I’m right, hyung,” Jeongin interrupts gently, softens his voice and his gaze and looks at Chan like he’s delicate. He is.

“Let me finish,” Chan says, although his authority is undermined by the wetness of his eyes, his voice thick in his throat. Jeongin falls quiet. “You’re right. And you’re… you’re really grown up, huh?” he sniffles, scrubbing harshly at his face. “Fuck, Ayennie. You’re really grown up, now.”

Jeongin blinks. Something bubbles underneath his skin. God, if he starts crying now, too… He swallows heavily. “I had some really good role models,” is all he says, through this lump in his throat.

Chan laughs again. “I wouldn’t say that.”

“Who said I was talking about you?” He was. They both know it. “I meant Minho-hyung.”

“Right, right.” Chan’s smile creases his pixelated face, even as his eyes are still damp. Jeongin doesn’t see him cry often. It’s always stuck with him, the few times Chan has let them see him fall apart – or, more often, hasn’t managed to run off and hide in time. Let is a strong word, implies a deliberate willingness; this, Jeongin thinks, might finally qualify. Even if Chan is half an hour away, still in the studio. “Christ, Jeongin. I’m. Can I ask you something?”

“Yeah, hyung. Of course.”

“Have you. Um.” Jeongin watches Chan swallow hard. “Been. Acting, um – God, I don’t want to say it like that, I sound so fucking sleazy. Sorry. Uh. Have you been –”

“Trying to get you to break?” Jeongin supplies, feeling a little bit too gleeful for his own good.

The combination of Chan teary-eyed and red-faced will, Jeongin thinks, occupy his dreams for far too long to be appropriate. Hm. Not really the time. “Yeah. Uh. That,” Chan says, with another of those self-deprecating laughs. “I’m – I tried so hard not to make you uncomfortable.”

“I was doing it on purpose,” Jeongin says. Chan isn’t quite looking at him, isn’t quite making eye contact. He says, carefully, “you wouldn’t have made me uncomfortable like that.”

Chan picks up on it, at least. His brow creases. “But I made you uncomfortable in other ways?”

“Well,” Jeongin presses his lips together. Chan wipes at his face again, which does little to dry any of his tears and only serves to irritate his cheeks with the rough fabric of his sleeve. “I… I think I just don’t understand. Why you were so against all of this. With everyone. The others said you were trying to protect me.”

“I was trying to protect you,” Chan says, although he doesn’t look as convinced by it now. “It’s my job to look after you. I’d never want to jeopardise that. Or… let someone else jeopardise it.”

“That wasn’t your call to make,” says Jeongin. Chan’s face spasms again, blinking heavily, lips twitching. “Hyung. You didn’t need to protect me from – from yourself. Or the others.”

“No,” Chan says. The tinny quality of his voice, through the call audio, makes him sound very far away; Jeongin wishes he were here, close enough to touch. Part of him thinks, though, that if Chan had to look him in the eye they might have never had this conversation. That the distance made Chan feel safe enough to face him – metaphorically, in the absence of doing it literally. (Chan’s always been weird about eye contact, actually. A thought for another day.) “I. I think – when we – when Jisung and Minho, I – God, I can’t put words in order. Sorry. Fuck.” His breath shudders through the call. Jeongin shifts in the bed, a little embarrassed now that he’s less actively horny by the pillow still sitting on his lap – but Chan has always made him desperate.

“Hyung,” Jeongin says. “It’s just me.”

“You’re – it’s never just when it’s you, Jeonginnie,” Chan says, forcefully but almost without weight, like it should be obvious, like it shouldn’t need to be said. “I, uh – I think it scared me. With – that I couldn’t stop the rest of them. So I was, like, oh, here’s one – here’s one way I can stop it all going wrong. Here’s one thing I can still fix, you know?”

“It didn’t need fixing,” Jeongin says, quietly, insistent. Hurt curdles in his chest, but it’s muted, sweetened, by the way Chan speaks to him: like dredging the bottom of the river. Dragging out the buried flecks of gold. Like it’s not easy, but Chan is doing it anyway.

“I know,” Chan whispers. “I’m sorry. I know. I see that now.”

“And it’s not going wrong,” Jeongin says, picking at Chan’s words. “And I want it. We both want it. We all want this.”

“I know,” Chan says. His shoulders rise and fall with his breaths. “It just… scared me. You know how much you mean to me, baby. All of you. I’m sorry.”

“Just don’t do it again,” Jeongin says, like everything is fixed. Really, it feels like it might be. He looks at Chan in his phone screen, the splayed open look on his face, the corners of his eyes, the red of his waterline and the dark of his eyelashes. “Okay?”

“Okay,” Chan agrees, and at once his voice sounds a little brighter. Lighter. He still doesn’t quite look at Jeongin, but his face turns a little closer to the phone screen. Something settled down, pacified, a floodplain drained. “Okay.”

Jeongin takes a deep breath. He feels drained too, his body the snapped reeds and scattered muck of the marshes after the flood has receded. “Can you. Come home soon?”

Chan swipes at an eye again. “Hm?”

“Not. Um.” Jeongin feels his cheeks heating, hopes that the camera can’t pick it up. “I’m not – I mean – so that you can sleep.”

“Ohhh,” Chan says, almost teasing but still a little tentative, like he’s uncertain of his welcome. “Not sleep with you?”

Jeongin scowls. He’s not hard any more, obviously, but his dick definitely does twitch, which is fucking humiliating. “See if I ever express concern for your wellbeing again, hyung!”

Chan just laughs, though, light and free, like he knows Jeongin doesn’t mean a word of it. “I’ll come home just for you, Innie-yah,” he says, scrunching his eyes up and his mouth into a smile, arranging his hands beneath his chin and putting on a cutesy voice. “Anything for you, aegi-yah.”

“Hey, hyung,” Jeongin scolds, in the face of Chan’s aegyo, but can’t quite bring himself to tell Chan to stop outright. He’s cute about it. Jeongin likes him so much. Christ. “I’ll… did you eat, yet?”

“You want me to get some food on my way back?” Chan asks. “I can pick something up. What do you want?”

“I was going to order something,” Jeongin says. He could have it waiting by the time Chan gets through the door, something to prove that Chan deserves these things, this . Being taken care of. Chan just twitches an eyebrow, like he’s appalled Jeongin even entertained such a thought in the first place. Jeongin frowns, amends: “I’ll order something. What do you want?”

“Ah, Iyennie, whatever’s fine – what were you in the mood for?”

“No,” Jeongin says. “Hyung. What do you want?”

“Ugh,” Chan says, and mumbles something into his hands along the lines of you sound way too much like –. “I. Um. I mean, I could go for a burger, if you’re really asking.”

“Okay,” Jeongin says, easily, pleased. He has a hypothesis, and pitches his voice saccharine: “That wasn’t so hard, hyung. Hey, who did you say I sound like?”

“Jesus fucking Christ, ” Chan splutters, and fumbles so clumsily for his phone that it must come dislodged; the camera swoops and then goes dark, Chan’s phone falling flat against the desk. Jeongin laughs. Chan reappears in a blur, red faced and bright-eyed. “Fucking – You need to stop hanging out with Minho and Seungmin.”

“I thought we agreed you weren’t going to tell me what I can and can’t do anymore,” Jeongin says lightly, teasingly, feels something giddy bubble up in his chest, leaning in closer to peer at Chan’s image on the screen. “Chan-hyung. Come home.”

Chan’s face twists. He sounds genuinely remorseful when he says, “I do – have a deadline, Jeonginnie. I’d – I’ll be back when I can, yeah?”

It doesn’t really sting; on some level, Jeongin had known that Chan is never really lying when he says he has to be at the studio, even if sometimes he’ll saddle himself with extra work on purpose to avoid people. And he supposes not everything can be solved in one conversation. “I’ll order for you,” he says, instead of don’t stay too late or you need to sleep or any other functionally useless platitude. “It won’t be as nice cold, but.” Both of them know that Chan would never order food for himself late at night with Jeongin asleep; this is the best Jeongin can offer to make sure, at least, he eats something.

“Okay,” Chan says, so fucking gentle, but not like he thinks Jeongin will break – just gentle like he wants to be, like he needs it. “If you’re awake I’ll come and say hi, okay? If you’re asleep, I’ll – I’ll talk to you in the morning.”

“Okay,” Jeongin says. He can’t remember the last time he felt this wrung-out, heavy; he thinks he honestly could pass out now, not even seven at night, if he let himself lie in bed a little longer. But his chest feels warm. Something jagged in him has worn down to smoothness, like banks eroded by the river after flood and flood and flood. “Love you,” he says, and tries to make it sound offhand. Chan isn’t the only one made bolder by the distance, the phone call, he thinks. Chan isn’t the only one who can’t always look these things in the eye.

Even pixelated, Chan’s smile is so fond Jeongin’s heart, the old fruit of it, swells again in his chest and bursts on the vine, sweet beyond recovery. Its guts scattered. “You too, Jeonginnie. Have a good evening, okay?”

“Okay,” Jeongin says, rote, feeling like he’s been clocked over the head by something. Chan smiles again, and then the call cuts. And it’s just Jeongin, and a pillow over his hips and a cock deeply confused by the amount of times it had gotten hard and then lost interest in that conversation and his scuffed bedroom ceiling, and the slow hazy contentment building in his chest.

Okay, he thinks. I can work with this.

Chan’s voice lingers with him as he drags himself out of bed and orders dinner, sinking its fingers into the meaty mass of his neurons, nestling there between the lobes of his brain: Jeonginnie. Baby. Love. 

I’d make it good, I promise.

In the morning, Jeongin wakes up anew, like something has cleared in his head. Clouds parted, an ocean split, like he’s looking at everything with new eyes. He’d fallen asleep by the time Chan had come home last night, but there’s a – vague, distant sort of memory, of someone brushing the hair out of his face and pressing careful lips to his forehead, something whispered, muffled against his skin. He can hear Chan, now, too, in the far-beyond outside of Jeongin’s room, puttering around their apartment.

The world put to rights, Jeongin thinks. He sits up slowly, blinks against the sun coming through his window. He feels like he slept better than he has in a while. Every bone, every muscle in his body, sits light and airy beneath his skin. He thinks he has the day off today, in this awkward period between the EP promotion starting in earnest and the production of it being entirely completed; things have always shifted in this liminal space. (He thinks he remembers, actually, when it was that things had first shifted in the group, the first time Minho and Jisung had – well, given in, Jeongin supposes, and feels a retroactive stab of sympathy now that he knows how overwhelming that desire is when it boils through your body. No one had told Jeongin, precisely, but he’d seen. He thinks, even then, he had just been trying not to know.)

He drifts in and out of sleep, savouring the luxury of it; the sounds of Chan in the kitchen die down, and when he rolls over to check his phone he sees Chan’s texted him I’ll see you tonight, with three hearts. Three. What a loser. Sheepishly, Jeongin drags himself out of bed, because if it’s late enough that Chan has actually headed to work he definitely should be getting up. He’s halfway through making coffee – Chan is better with the espresso machine than Jeongin is, and it’s fighting him this morning – when he hears the door unlock.

“Hyung?” Jeongin calls. “Did you forget something?”

Although, where he expects Chan’s voice to be harried and rushed, vaguely stressed about whatever he’s forgotten, Jeongin instead gets Felix, and then gets Felix’s arms wrapped securely around his waist, hugging him from behind.

“It’s me,” Felix says in his gremlin voice, so close to the back of Jeongin’s neck that it makes all of his hair stand up. And then Felix laughs, and ducks even closer to press a soft kiss right over the ridge of Jeongin’s C6 vertebra. “Minho-hyung said I should pay you a visit,” Felix continues, somehow managing to sound sleazy and adorable about it at the same time, “and I wanted to see you. Yah, Jeonginnie, what are you doing to this poor coffee machine?”

“You don’t even like coffee,” Jeongin says, even as the machine chugs through another sad shot of espresso. Felix just laughs though, keeping his arms wrapped around him.

“I live with Seungmin now,” Felix says, mostly into Jeongin’s shoulder. “If I didn’t know how to use the coffee machine, I think he’d evict me. Come here, let me do it.”

“He should evict you anyway,” Jeongin says. Felix digs his sharp chin into Jeongin’s back in reproach, right into the twinge of his – God, Changbin would know what they were called, but Jeongin has forgotten. The fucking sore muscle. “Ow, Felix, fuck.”

“Seungmin said I had to hurt you to see how you reacted,” Felix says, so sweet it’s almost tooth-rotting, “for the sake of his spreadsheet.” He reaches around Jeongin’s waist while Jeongin is still processing that, unhooking the coffee thingie from the machine and binning Jeongin’s sad coffee grounds, too quick for Jeongin to protest.

Jeongin just sighs and then leans back into Felix’s body, the slim grounded weight of it, the taut narrowness of his muscled frame. When Felix gets like this it’s a lot easier to just go along with it. He has a funny sort of understated confidence, the stubbornness too easily hidden by the affable cloak it wears: Felix will do whatever the fuck he wants, and smile beatifically at you about it the whole time, seeming unbothered. So Felix maneuvers Jeongin around the kitchen in order to make a coffee without detaching from his back, and then Jeongin and his human barnacle settle at the little kitchen table, and then Felix says, mouthing at Jeongin’s shoulder between words, “So Jisung is still moping about because he thinks you hate him.”

And, ah. Shit. Jisung. Jeongin makes a noise in the back of his throat. “Changbin-hyung told me to talk to him, too.” Felix just hums, like he’s waiting for Jeongin to keep talking. “I just haven’t… gotten the chance yet. I spoke to Hyunjin-hyung, and Chan-hyung instead. But I’ll talk to him today.”

Felix hums again, pursing his lips against Jeongin’s shoulder blade. “I heard about you and Hyunjinnie. Changbinnie-hyung said he walked in on you two making out in their hallway,” which is not quite true, Jeongin thinks, but doesn’t bother to correct him. And then: “you spoke to Chan-hyung? Did you – what about –?”

Jeongin sips his coffee, swallowing hard. “Just, um. Stuff.”

He doesn’t need to be looking at Felix to be able to feel the full weight of the glare he directs Jeongin’s way. “Stuff like?”

Jeongin scowls. “I think you’ve worked out what stuff, hyung.”

“Mm,” Felix says, noncommittally, his grin catlike. “I wanna hear you say it, though. Are you guys gonna fuck? Can I be there?”

“ No, ” Jeongin snaps, knee-jerk, and then – has to think about it. And then has to very determinedly not think about it. “Um. Maybe. Ask me again in, like – a month.”

“Your Leo moon is showing, king,” Felix says, patting Jeongin gently on the shoulder blade with a sort of discontented frown. “Get well soon.” He sobers, says gently, “I would say not to let him push you into anything you don’t want, but – I think we both know he’s not, like, physically capable of that. Be – gentle with him, though. Yeah?”

Jeongin nods a little, feels Felix’s body shifting against his own, the gentle rub of flesh against his. Nothing more than it has to be. Of course he’ll be gentle with Chan. Of course.

“And, um,” Felix continues, a little more tentative, digging the tip of his nose into Jeongin’s back. “Be gentle with Jisung, too, okay? They’re… probably more similar than they think they are. Be patient.”

Jeongin thinks he’s been patient for plenty long enough, if he really starts to think about it but – yeah. Okay. Felix is right, besides. Jisung and Chan are cut from the same cloth, when it comes down to it. No wonder he likes them both so much.

“Anyway.” Felix nuzzles closer into him, to the point that Jeongin has to wonder how he’s making himself fit against Jeongin’s body like this, and then to the point that Jeongin has to think very intently, for a second, about his old halmeoni home in Busan – and the low, sotto voce rasp of Felix’s voice doesn’t help, either, like gravel and silt swept along the riverbed. “Channie-hyung was giving Minho shit about the handprint on the mirror, hm? I didn’t know you were into –”

“Shut up, ” Jeongin hisses, mortified, then tries to drown himself in his coffee cup. 

Felix, thankfully, does decide not to finish that sentence. Instead, he skirts his fingers over Jeongin’s exposed throat, toying with the hem of his loose sleep shirt; then, as he tugs and prods at it, snickers. “There it is,” he says, far too delighted for this early in the morning. “Hyung was in trouble for this too, you know.”

The hickey Minho had left has faded a little, but the bruise still yawns dark enough to be noticeable. Felix finds it anyway, and his fingers are harsh enough to make Jeongin yelp a little. He’s been trying to keep it hidden, as best he can, but… Maybe not that well. Either way, it’s kind of hard to imagine Minho being in trouble for anything. Especially with Chan.

“Minho-hyung was in trouble?”

“Mm. Not much,” Felix says. His fingers dig into the mark, again. “Well. I think Chan was mostly just jealous. But yeah, a little.”

Jeongin pinches at Felix’s hip, lightly, in reprimand. “If any of you want it to heal quicker, then you should stop touching it.”

Felix just laughs though, loose and gentle. “You think any of us want to see you without marks, now, huh? Minho-hyung doesn’t know what he’s done. If I had my way, Jeonginnie, you’d be covered in them already.”

Oh. Um. “That seems. Not like a good idea,” Jeongin says, his voice embarrassingly reedy. He can’t help it. The way Felix says any of us, so casually, like it’s a foregone conclusion that all seven of them want Jeongin that badly, want to see him, want to touch him – he shivers in his seat, then feels himself blush even darker as Felix laughs. “Shut up, ” he whines again. “You’re – you – ugh. ”

“Not how you’re meant to speak to your hyung,” Felix teases, and pinches at the skin right next to the hickey, his blunt nails a dull sweet sting. He follows it with a gentle brush of his lips, an empty promise of something sharper, stronger. Jeongin closes his eyes against the swell of bruised affection in his chest, feels the flood boil outwards through his body, lets Felix kiss his throat. Just gently. Just for a moment.

No marks. Not this time.

Jeongin breathes, eyes still closed, “Sometimes I wish things were different.” His voice comes out small, fragile. Felix stills, lips still pressed against his skin but not moving, just the faint sensation of their presence; Jeongin adds, a little wretched, “That it wasn’t all so complicated. That we can’t – that I can’t –” 

“I know,” Felix murmurs. His lips move against Jeongin as he speaks, and his arms twine their way back around Jeongin’s waist, giving him a brief firm squeeze before settling into a looser hug. Felix pulls back a little further, until Jeongin feels his breath, and not Felix’s lips, across his throat. “But we found each other, yeah? And we have – we’ve got this. We’ve got what we have.” There’s a hint of bitterness at the edge of Felix’s tone, worn enough by the years that it would be easy to miss – if Jeongin wasn’t looking for it, if he didn’t know the taste of it on his own tongue. Like Felix is viscerally aware of how close all of them had come, one way or another, to not having it. Or to losing it once they’d had a taste.

“I think,” Jeongin says, with a mouth tasting like coffee made with only a little milk, just the way he’s always liked it and just bitter enough to linger, “we would’ve found each other anyway. Somehow.” It feels too natural. Too easy, the way Felix touches him. It feels too easy to love him; frighteningly perfect, to let the banks of his body break, to let the flood roll in to the places where he’s spent so long holding himself back. It had felt so good. It had felt so right.

“I don’t,” Felix says, offhandedly. He shuffles to press his cheek against Jeongin’s for a moment, a strange sort of intimacy. His fingers draw shapes on Jeongin’s hip. “Statistically. I would’ve ended up back in Sydney without Channie-hyung. You might’ve waited a little longer to debut. And on and on. It’s kind of cool, though, hey? That we lived in the timeline with the perfect amount of coincidences.”

“I don’t think it’s a coincidence, hyung,” says Jeongin, a little prickly. He can’t imagine – not having this. Having it like this. “We’ve all – we all put the work in to get here. We all… got here. There couldn’t be anybody else.”

Felix hums, considering. “You really think that?”

“You think Chan-hyung would have let you just leave ?” Jeongin counters. “I don’t think it’s a coincidence. He loves you. He loves all of us.”

Felix hums again, rocking back and forth and side to side gently, rocking Jeongin with him. “Wahhh. Your whimsy is so cute, maknae-yah.”

“It’s not whimsy, ” says Jeongin, letting Felix move him. Even when Felix’s hand slides up from his hip to pinch his cheek. “It’s just true.”

Felix just coos, “your Aquarius is showing too, Ayennie. You’re so textbook, you know?”

“How can you talk to me about my birth chart and then tell me you don’t think it’s fate for us all to be together,” Jeongin says, trying not to sound too endeared by it. Even when Felix laughs. “Yah. That’s a serious question.”

“Mm. I don’t think so.” Felix presses his smile into Jeongin’s shoulder. “You done with your coffee, pretty boy? I gotta text Minho-hyung.”

Jeongin blinks hard at his mug. His body is a city skyline at dusk: windows flickering alight one by one, the night bringing brilliance to each little cell. He’s so normal about Felix calling him names. “Why do you have to text hyung,” he says, his fingers flexing against the handle of his mug, feeling made malleable, undone; he wants Felix to kiss him so bad he’s dizzy with it. He wants Minho, for that matter, to do the same. 

“He sensed a disturbance in the Force,” Felix says, like that explains literally anything at all. He untwines himself from Jeongin’s body, then gently tugs the empty mug from Jeongin’s hand, replacing it with his own fingers for a moment so they’re intertwined: four sets of two, a sweet little tangle, as Felix’s thumb traces over the bone of Jeongin’s wrist. They’re mismatched in size; still, they fit together. Jeongin feels something swell in his throat. “Jeongin-ah,” Felix says, lightly, to get his attention, then brings their joined hands to his lips and presses his smile to the back of Jeongin’s hand. “This is special, yeah? We’re not going to let it fall apart.”

Certainty thrums low and beautiful in his voice, the force of his conviction like the river bowling down the dam. Jeongin says, hoarse, “I might ask Jisung to hang out.”

“Good boy,” Felix says, catlike and smug. He’s joking. He’s joking. His lips are still so close to Jeongin’s hand. He carries that feline satisfaction in his body: Felix is a man who looks like he has, at long last, everything he wants.

Jeongin is so close he can almost taste it. Here: the river knows the way to the sea. Here: it spreads its tributaries, unfurling, as it comes home to her.

11.42 am [ jeonginnie] hyung

11.42 am [ jeonginnie ] are you busy?

Jisung is not busy. Actually, it turns out he is trying, on purpose, to avoid having to go record with Changbin. He texts Jeongin back, like he’s forgotten the air of awkwardness between them recently, and says: not at all! And You want coffee? And Jeongin barely gets a chance to reply before Jisung turns up at his door, two drinks in hand and a grin on his face that sits a little differently to the ones he’s been wearing for the past few days.

Once the front door shuts, though, reality tumbles back in. Jeongin thinks about Felix; if he focuses, he can still smell Felix’s cologne, lingering in the air where he’d been sitting in the kitchen. About Changbin, too, and Minho, telling him there are things he doesn’t quite understand yet. Jisung sits in front of him, eyes darting around skittishly.

Jeongin swallows. This is Jisung. He loves Jisung. Fuck, he loves Jisung. “Why are you avoiding Changbin-hyung?”

Jisung laughs, so it can’t be that serious. His cheeks flush, all across the bridge of his nose, and he ducks his head. “Ahh. He wanted me to have finished a guide track for something and I haven’t, yet. He’ll be frustrated.”

Jeongin frowns. Jisung – hell, any of them – have reacted less dramatically for worse. “Is that all?”

“Aish, who made you so astute?” Jisung says, and his fingers twitch around his coffee cup like he wants to reach out and thread them through Jeongin’s hair, or pinch at his cheeks, or tug at his lips. “He wants to talk to me. And I don’t want to talk to him yet.”

“About…?” About me , Jeongin figures, and the way Jisung refuses to fill in the blank gives it away. About him. Jeongin figured he’d be nervous to have this conversation, but it’s almost jarring how easily he still fits across from Jisung, how neatly they slot together – seven years and change of knowing each other inside and out doesn’t slough off after one too-hasty argument. Jeongin can’t even remember what he said. He thinks it – might have stuck with Jisung, though, might have bitten a little too close to the quick. So he says, quiet and earnest, “I’m sorry.”

“Huh?” Jisung blinks at him, seeming genuinely perplexed. His knee is bouncing. Jeongin thinks that might be a good sign rather than a bad one – Changbin had pointed out to him, once, how Jisung only fidgeted at home or in private, how anxiety shut him still and padlock-tight into his body, how motion shook it out of him when he felt safe enough to let it. Well, Changbin had just said, Funny that he only does that when we’re alone, you’d think it’d be the other way around. Jeongin had filled in the rest.

“I was – short with you,” Jeongin says. “After. I said some things I shouldn’t have. And you’ve been avoiding me, so I – wanted to say that I’m sorry for that.”

Jisung blinks, hard and fast, like he can’t quite understand what Jeongin’s saying to him. “What? You… God, Jeonginnie, you were well within your right to be angry. To be angry with me. I was… I was so not – I was unfair. More unfair to you than you were short with me.”

That’s not the point, Jeongin wants to say, wants to insist Jisung takes his apology, accepts it, listens to it. But also, part of him… Jisung hadn’t been fair. Maybe he’d been right to be annoyed. Upset. 

“Either way,” Jeongin says, softly, “I’m sorry I hurt you –” because he had, hurt Jisung and himself, no matter how much Jisung thinks he deserves it. “It hurt me, too. To be angry with you.”

Jisung makes a face like this entire conversation causes him physical pain. His eyes go very big and round and wet, looking at Jeongin like he’s never seen him before. “Maknae-yah,” he says, fragile, gentle, “you’re so… why are you so kind ?” As if this is actually psychologically distressing to him, that Jeongin is kind. That Jeongin loves him more than he knows what to do with.

“Got it from my mother,” Jeongin says snittily, just to go a little easy on him, because Jisung does look about two seconds from being melted into a sad little puddle by the sincerity. “Certainly none of you.”

“Rude,” Jisung says, as though by rote. He laughs. “God, I hate when Changbin-hyung makes us talk about our feelings.”

“Right?” Jeongin says, fighting the urge to press his forehead into the table. “It’s the fucking worst. ”

“It’s.” Jisung makes another little face, then gives a sort of shuddery laugh, self-deprecating. “Gahhhh. I was, like, I have to not fuck this up, and then I managed to do it anyway.”

“None of us handled this very well,” Jeongin offers, and then watches the way Jisung seems to die inside. “Is what Changbin-hyung would say, at least. I think we’ve just… hyung, we’re all just figuring this out, right?”

Jisung frowns cutely, brow wrinkling, like he isn’t too sure where Jeongin is going with this. “Yeah?”

“We’re still figuring it out,” Jeongin says, like what Felix had said. We’re not going to let it fall apart. “I forgive you, if you fucked up. I just want to understand, now.”

“You spent too much time with Changbin,” Jisung says, something accusatory, not quite meaning it. “Did he… did any of them tell you about when we all started, um, messing around? I thought Minho might have mentioned it, but…”

Jeongin doesn’t miss the nakedness of the name, the lack of honorific; he’s only heard Jisung slip up like this maybe twice, and it’s jarring the way Jisung doesn’t even seem to notice. Still, he doesn’t comment. “Um. Only that Chan-hyung yelled at him about it.” He swallows. “So I get the feeling it didn’t – go down so well. At first.”

Jisung snorts. It’s easy to forget, Jeongin thinks, the layers to him – something dark yawns for just a moment in the shadows beneath his eyes, a sense of age, exhaustion, a bitter sort of wisdom. Then it folds itself back into Jisung’s bashful smile and swallows itself away. “And then they didn’t talk to each other for a week, yeah. Cause I couldn’t keep it in my pants.” His laughter is too smooth now, like he’s practiced finding this funny in retrospect, like it didn’t always come this easy. “I feel like – wanting something can kind of blind you to the consequences. It’s fucking scary sometimes. I don’t like – feeling out of control like that. Like I could care less what happens next because in the moment all that matters is how badly I – want something.” His eyes are a different sort of dark now, fixed on Jeongin’s. “Someone.” 

“It wouldn’t have –” Jeongin starts, and then can’t bring himself to finish. It wouldn’t have – what? Spiralled again, out of control, down like a lead balloon? He thinks about Chan, a little, and how easily things had gone… not overboard, he thinks. But close enough to it. Jisung’s apprehension can’t be faulted. What’s different now; that Chan wants Jeongin, too? But Chan wants Jisung, as well, Jeongin thinks. As would anyone with eyes.

“It nearly did,” Jisung says, a little sad, resigned to it, “I really… that night, when we… I really thought Chan-hyung would come home and be so… upset with me. Or you. Both of us. He’s been weird about it with all of us.”

Jeongin wonders if they know why , if they all know how much of Chan’s entire world revolves around the seven of them. He can see Chan’s eyes now, in the back of his mind, burned into the walls of his brain, staring at him through the lens of his phone camera. Chan’s eyes, telling Jeongin he loves him. Chan’s white knuckles; the slow curdling process of love into fear.

The brush of lips against his brow. Chan’s. Then Felix’s, against his throat. Changbin kissing him yesterday, and Minho the day before that with such fervour he left a mark, and, and –

“He was,” Jeongin says honestly. “Because he was scared. He’s chill now, though, I think you just need to make him so horny it overpowers the guilt complex?” This startles a real laugh from Jisung, less practiced than the smooth idol chuckle from before, scratchy from disuse. Jeongin reaches out, across the table, takes Jisung’s hand into his own. They fit together nicely. When he squeezes, Jisung squeezes back.

“And,” Jisung says, hesitant, earnest. “Don’t hate me for this, okay, let me say it. You’re – you’re so fucking important to us, Iyennie. If I’d –”

“You say that like you’re not,” Jeongin interrupts. Jisung falters and trails off like his entire brain has been rebooted.

“What?”

“You’re –” a drop of condensation tracks its way down the side of his coffee cup, onto the table. Jeongin dips his finger in it, drags the water out across the tabletop. “You’re important to us all. Too. Just as much as me.”

Jisung pulls a face. He takes a long sip from his coffee, too, as if to avoid having to reply. He says, “ahh, Jeonginnie,” putting on a cutesy voice, “so good to your hyungs, hm? So sweet and kind to us.”

“I mean it,” Jeongin says. Jisung sets up his bait, hook and line, and Jeongin doesn’t bite. “You… we all, God. We’re all kind of obsessed with each other. And you’re part of that.”

“I’ve never been obsessed with someone in my life,” Jisung says, quickly and easily, but the smile he gives Jeongin this time is – shaky, watery. Jeongin watches as Jisung smooths the unease from his own expression in real time – not like he wants to hide it from Jeongin, but like he’s letting Jeongin watch the process of it, offering him a backstage pass. How the magic is made, Jeongin thinks a little bitterly. How Jisung smiles. “Fuck, Jeonginnie. You’re doing that thing Seungmin does.”

Jeongin feels his own brow wrinkle. “What thing?”

“Where he, like – looks at you, and that’s all he needs to psychoanalyse you and your history and use it to predict your entire future.” 

“I’m not doing that,” Jeongin says, but he considers… maybe. Seungmin’s done it to him often enough, he’s picked up the habit. All these tiny pieces of each other, lodged in his skin, some kind of foundation. Like Changbin’s words, and Minho’s, how Jeongin regurgitates them to Chan and to Jisung. He thinks about Felix, telling him Chan and Jisung are more similar than they realise. “Maybe I’m doing that.”

“You spend too much time with him,” Jisung says, but it sounds a little lighter, more carefree and teasing now. “We can’t have two Seungmins.”

“Tell me how you feel, then,” Jeongin asks, trying to be gentle about it, “and I won’t have to psychoanalyse you.” Changbin’s words: they’re not in each other’s heads. Jisung looks like he knows exactly who said that, too. 

“It’s like you want me to have an aneurysm,” Jisung says, almost reflexively. The joke has always sprung quickly to his tongue; Jeongin used to envy it. Now it seems a little too defensive to properly land. Jisung is beautiful now, because he always is, because Jeongin doesn’t know how to look at him and not want him from the depths of his own marrow – but it seems soured by the unsettled way Jisung holds himself. Jeongin has seen Jisung anxious plenty of times, though they like to try to hide it from him, shuttle Jisung into dressing rooms and Jeongin away when it gets bad. It feels unsettling to know Jeongin has done this, or at least contributed. But Jeongin has to say it.

“Nothing bad’s going to happen just because I want to have sex with you,” he says, a funny mix of ripping off the bandaid as gently as he can. 

Jisung seems to falter. Like something unsaid bubbles up behind his teeth; Jeongin watches him swallow it away. “I know,” he says, sounding very much like he doesn’t believe a word of it. “I – I know that. Of course I know that.”

“Hyung,” Jeongin says, careful, not needing to say much more. He blinks at Jisung, tilts his head, can feel himself making a face but he can’t quite put a finger on what it is.

Jisung looks away. “Of course I know that. Ayen-ah, I – you’re –”

“Tell me how you feel,” Jeongin repeats, trying not to push. Part of him wants to, though, wants to press Jisung for an answer, here and now. “Please?”

“You already know how I feel,” Jisung says, which is – well, true enough. Jeongin could make a fairly educated guess, and Jisung isn’t particularly good at hiding things for all he doesn’t know how to deal with them. Besides, of course Jeongin recognises the way Jisung seems to both shrink and grow when he looks at him; he knows it so very intimately, the swell and ebb of the river inside his own chest. Of loving someone, and the way it both fits and doesn’t fit inside the banks of his body.

But. “I want you to say it,” Jeongin says, and is startled by the hoarseness of his own voice, the plaintiveness of his wanting. “Hyung. Please.”

Jisung folds; he always folds when Jeongin says please and means it. “It’s – hard to word,” he says, and this, Jeongin thinks, coming from Han Jisung, who lives more in his words than he does in his body, who writes so much and manages to say exactly as little as he wants of what he really means. Jisung’s eyes catch the light oddly, one iris a honeyed brown where the lamplight finds it. “It’s. Love isn’t really enough, is it? It’s – broader and narrower.” A self-deprecating laugh, and then Jisung’s eyes flicker to meet Jeongin’s in its aftermath, with a sort of desperation. Like he wants Jeongin to get it. Is begging him to understand.

Part of him does, he thinks. The differences Jisung talks about, the spectrum of affection, of love, of desire, as it encompasses all of them. Different shapes, against the grain and with it, all made of the same thing. Love isn’t enough, Jeongin thinks, when it comes to the eight of them. Something like fate, like want, and like need. He hums, and says, “I know,” because he does, and then says, “but for us – you and me, it’s – it’s enough?”

Jisung’s face softens, like maybe he’s seeing some part of Jeongin that he hadn’t intended to, something softer too, fragile, small. “Yeah,” he says, careful. Not quite so deprecating anymore. “Yeah. It’s enough.”

“Or more than,” Jeongin offers. He feels sort of helpless, pinned, by his own implied admission. He swallows. Adds, voice small, “You know I had the hugest crush on you when we were trainees.”

“Who wouldn’t?” Jisung says sunnily, then visibly softens. “Fucking hell, Jeonginnie. That was a long time ago. What did you even see in my skinny little self, huh?”

“You, ” Jeongin says, choked but intent. This fucking brilliant man. That beautiful too-clever boy, who’d slung his arm around Jeongin’s shoulder and shown him which vending machines were broken enough to give you an extra pack of shrimp chips if you kicked it at just the right moment, who’d held his tongue in their lessons until the moment he was pointed at by a teacher because he’d already learned that no one liked a prodigy. Jeongin reaches for him across the table, then hesitates, draws his own hand back. Shy and wanting.

Jisung reaches back, though, puts his hand palm up on the tabletop instead. His fingers curl up a little, like he’s waiting to wrap them around Jeongin’s hand. Like this, Jeongin can see the lines of his palm, in stark relief under the lights, and the bitten red edges of his cuticles. He doesn’t quite look at Jeongin, not for the few terrible seconds before Jeongin puts his hand in Jisung’s. And then he does. 

“Jeongin-ah,” Jisung says, quiet, tender. His fingertips are cold where they brush against Jeongin’s, but the centre of his palm is warm, strong and calloused with years of work. “Jeonginnie.”

Jeongin drags his thumb in a rough semicircle over the arch of Jisung’s hand, exploring the neat bones of it. He says, “I want this. You. I have for a long time.” He watches Jisung’s throat ripple with the movement of his swallow, and then gets distracted by the pretty line of his trachea, the space between his collarbones; Jeongin drags his eyes along the honey-brown skin there, where the scallop of Jisung’s shirt collar hangs loose and low. Jeongin wants to map it with his lips. It’s not as frightening a thing to think as it might once have been; Jeongin is allowed to want this, he remembers. To reach out and touch. To drag his gaze honey-sweet along the places he wants to fit his teeth.

“My eyes are up here,” Jisung says. When Jeongin glances guiltily back up at them, he finds a smile written in their creases. Jisung blinks, slow and feather soft, eyelashes fluttering even as his cheeks turn pink. His head tilts a little, teeth biting into his lip. “What do you want now, Ayen-ah?”

Now, Jeongin breaks eye contact. He can feel his heart beating, all the way in his fingertips. “Hyung,” he says, and stops. Inhales, feels his breath move his entire body. “Hyung, will you let me suck you off now?”

It startles Jisung enough to laugh, the flush in his face dissipating out into something gentler, happier. His lip is reddened, marked by two indents where his teeth had been, sharp in his mouth. But his eyes clear, just a little. “Aish, really? At your kitchen table?”

Well, Jeongin thinks. He and Chan have – already done worse. Maybe. If staring unabashedly at his roommate’s dick print counts for that. “Why not,” he says brusquely. Anyway, Jisung already sucked Jeongin off in the entryway, which has to be the greater sin.

Jisung tilts his head a little, like looking at Jeongin from an infinitesimally different angle will show him something he hasn’t already seen. Jeongin doubts there’s anything to learn that Jisung doesn’t already know. “At least kiss hyung first, Jeonginnie,” he says, voice lower now, sweeter, and it’s a joke until it’s not, he’s making fun until he isn’t. Jeongin scrambles out of his chair and stumbles his way around the table, almost embarrassed by his own eagerness but too caught up in the current of need to care; he stops just in front of Jisung’s crossed legs, smiles pleased and breathless at the gratifying way that Jisung’s eyes go half-lidded as he looks up at Jeongin. Jisung’s hand settles on the smallest part of Jeongin’s waist, so warm it feels impossible, a weight so familiar Jeongin could recognise it with his eyes closed.

Slowly, deliberately, Jisung tugs Jeongin closer by the hand on his waist until Jeongin is straddling him in his chair, his legs parted around Jisung’s. “Okay,” Jeongin says, voice humiliatingly hoarse. “Okay.” He doesn’t know what to do with his hands. But Jisung smiles up at him, and even a Jisung possessed by desire is still Jisung, who Jeongin knows inside and out; the brief fit of sensuousness is gone from him, and now he’s just Jisung, eager and a little silly and a little too confident for his own good, and it’s Jisung who tugs Jeongin closer, lower, until his weight is settled in Jisung’s lap. Which is worse, somehow. That it’s Jisung beneath him. Jisung whose lips are parted a little, whose breath smells like coffee and toothpaste, who squirms a little beneath Jeongin as if to get comfortable and then relaxes back into the chair, unfurling. Eyes still half-lidded. His smirk lazy and sweet.

“Ugh, you’re obnoxious,” Jeongin says, and kisses him.

Jisung kisses with familiarity, the way he had in the entrance hall days ago, with lips soft and knowing, mouth open, teeth sharp. He doesn’t bother to keep his hands to himself, skates them up and down Jeongin’s flank with feather-light fingertips, makes sparks skitter across Jeongin’s skin even beneath the fabric of his shirt. Jeongin feels himself shiver, feels his every muscle tense up in the wake of Jisung’s touch, kinetic energy rifling through him. He redirects it to his lips, presses himself into Jisung, against his mouth, fights fire with fire. 

Jisung exhales heavily, clenches his hand around Jeongin’s waist. He pulls away, just enough to speak, murmured and whispering. “God, you – really? You want to? Here? Now?”

“Have you seen yourself,” Jeongin mumbles, put out. “What kind of stupid question is that, hyung.” He fumbles at the hem of Jisung’s stupid loose workout shirt, thanks everything good in the world that it wasn’t a sleeveless one for the sake of his own sanity as he runs his hands in tandem up the smooth skin of Jisung’s bare sides, can’t quite resist the urge to pinch the soft spot where he knows it makes Jisung flinch. Listen – Jeongin is only a man. Jisung shrieks as Jeongin digs his blunt nails into the flesh of Jisung’s hip, and then – beneath Jeongin’s body, he feels Jisung’s cock kick in his shorts. 

Oh.

Jeongin snickers. “Oh my fucking God, hyung, that explains so much.”

“Shut up and die,” Jisung groans, tipping his head forward to hide his face in Jeongin’s chest. “Fuck off. Leave me alone. Let me die in peace.”

Jeongin pinches him again, just to feel the way Jisung twitches, the intake of breath against his collarbone, and then relents. “Okay, okay. Just – does –?”

“If you’re about to ask me if Minho-hyung likes it, I’ll leave and never kiss you again,” Jisung threatens, clearly not meaning it. He seems perfectly content to stay sat here, Jeongin in his lap. His fingers twitch against Jeongin’s own waist, and then he moves his hands when Jeongin pulls his shirt up high enough to take it off completely. Jisung’s skin turns to gooseflesh almost immediately, between the cool air in the kitchen and the greedy trails Jeongin makes with his fingertips. His nipples harden, and his stomach tenses a little, and Jeongin feels a little… a little lightheaded, actually. He has had dreams about Jisung’s pecs. About getting his teeth in them.

“You have to cover your chest up anyway, right,” Jeongin mumbles, already squirming in place to get his mouth on Jisung’s nipple, feeling the way Jisung trembles beneath him at the scrape of teeth over his areola. His other hand traces the rough outline of the tattoo high on Jisung’s chest, resisting the urge to scratch at the skin. When Jeongin drags his tongue along the underside of Jisung’s nipple, he feels the shudder that works its way through both of them, and pulls off, pleased, gazing at the spit-shiny brown of the areola for a moment before glancing back up at Jisung’s face, which has gone hazy, his eyes dark with want and still damnably lidded in the way that makes Jeongin feel entirely feral. Fuck. Jesus fucking Christ. How does Minho live with this man and, like – survive?

“Yeah,” Jisung says, sounding a little confused as to why Jeongin’s asking, until he gets his teeth in the meat of Jisung’s pecs and bites down hard. Then Jisung’s breath catches, shudders, his hands clench and unclench. “Ah, fuck – hasn’t – has no one talked to you about marks yet? Fuck –”

Jeongin hums around Jisung’s flesh, sucks hard for a final second before pulling off. The hickey he’d left is red, reddening quickly, and Jeongin digs his thumb into it for a second, just to see the way Jisung shivers. “Just to say that I shouldn’t. But Minho-hyung did.”

Jisung’s laughter is breathless. “Yeah, and Chan-hyung wasn’t happy at all. Minho-hyung doesn’t really care. But you can – just, it has to be easily covered. Hyung just likes leaving them on everyone’s necks.”

“Hm,” Jeongin says, thinking about the maddening crescent of Changbin’s tummy when his shirt rides up, about the fucking ridiculous expanses of Hyunjin’s legs, about the way that Minho’s thighs have haunted him for years. About Jisung’s stupid, horrible, no good, very bad chest. “Good to know.” 

“That sounds ominous,” Jisung says, then squeaks when Jeongin presses his lips to the other side of his chest, grazes the skin with the suggestion of his teeth but doesn’t actually bite. Only lets him feel that Jeongin wants to. “Fuck, Iyennie, just – just –”

“Who wins the bet,” Jeongin says against his chest, “if I fuck you now.” It seems very important, suddenly. Being around Jisung makes him feel – light in the chest, silly, free in a way he doesn’t often taste; plus, he kind of thinks Jisung might start begging for it if Jeongin implies he’s not going to have sex with him and the thought of that is going to live in Jeongin’s bone marrow and also his spank bank, rent free, potentially forever. 

“What?” Jisung manages, voice shaky, as Jeongin sucks another mark into his pec.

“If I fuck you now,” Jeongin repeats, sitting back to look Jisung in the eye. “Who wins?”

Jisung’s brow furrows cutely, all scrunched up like he’s trying hard to remember. “Um, I – I don’t know, I think Felix bet on me. Does it even matter? Ayen-ah –”

He leans in to press a soft kiss against Jisung’s lips again. “You’ll have to wait, then.”

“Wha – really?”

“I already promised Seungmin,” Jeongin says. Well, he thinks Felix had mentioned something about splitting the winnings, too, but… he can play their game now. Have part of it for himself.

Jisung’s face falls a little, eyes blinking rapidly, like he can’t quite make sense of the words he’s hearing. “But you – the other night –”

“The other night you wanted to stop because of the bet,” Jeongin says, but he smooths his thumb over the swell of Jisung’s bottom lip carefully. “Hyung, you just have to be patient.”

Jisung squirms. He’s definitely half-hard beneath Jeongin, from kissing, from having Jeongin in his lap, from having his tits sucked; it’s a heady thought. But his eyes are a little clearer when he says, whiny, “Jeong innie. You’re horrible.”

“Fair’s fair,” Jeongin says, and presses a kiss to Jisung’s brow this time, feeling something tender swell in his chest. It’s really okay, then, if Jisung can laugh about it and mean it. And the ache of pressing on that metaphorical bruise is gone; Jeongin digs his fingers into what had been a sore spot, thinking of Jisung on his knees, Jisung turning him down, Jisung leaving, and finds no sting. “Cry about it,” Jeongin says, and both of them know he doesn’t mean it.

“Yah,” Jisung says, no strength behind it. “Fine, fine. I can tell where I’m not wanted. I’ll just go find someone who does.”

“Don’t be like that, hyung,” Jeongin says, teasing, but he clambers off Jisung’s lap anyway, leans back against the table, reluctant to stray too far from him. “I do want you. I just want to win the bet, too.”

“You’re going to win by having the best orgasm of your life,” Jisung says, playing it up a little more, now he can move without Jeongin sat on him, “and you’re going to leave the rest of us here to suffer and die of blue balls.”

“Go find Hyunjin-hyung,” Jeongin suggests, “or Changbin-hyung, or Minho-hyung. I bet they’d all be very happy to see you.”

Jisung’s eyes narrow, even as his cheeks flush very red. “Did Hyunjin tell you about that?!”

“Tell me about what?” Jeongin says, blinking, and then watches Jisung open and close his mouth with a sort of mortified regret. Ah, the self-report. “Huh? Hyung?”

“Don’t worry about it,” Jisung says, pitchy. He tries to stand up from the chair and actually wobbles; Jeongin steadies him with a hand on his waist, then abruptly tries and fails to think any coherent thoughts in the face of how much of the span of Jisung’s waist Jeongin’s hand stretches around. Interesting. Jisung makes a faintly distressed noise, then says, “I am going to go find someone who appreciates me and my fantastic hole and is not monetarily disincentivised to do anything about it. ”

He’s so cute about it, Jeongin has to pinch the flesh at his hip, cataloguing the way Jisung’s eyes scrunch and narrow in pleasure and then – playful annoyance. He brushes Jeongin’s hands away, stepping out from the table, more balanced on his feet now. “Ah, hyung,” Jeongin says, meaning so many things, as Jisung steps around the kitchen. “Jisung-hyung.”

Jisung turns to look at him, eyes wide, dark, mouth turning up like he doesn’t have a chance of stopping it. “What?”

“I love you,” Jeongin says, makes it easy, needs it to be easy. The look that spills over Jisung face is worth it.

“You too, Jeonginnie,” Jisung whispers after a moment, like he’s afraid that speaking any louder will shatter it. But it won’t, it won’t, Jeongin thinks, with a vicious sort of glee, like throwing it back in the faces of everyone who told him he couldn’t have this – it will be okay, they will figure it out. Jisung looks back at him, and Jeongin sees the river in his eyes. The flood has come and gone, and neither of them have drowned.

Jisung smiles. Then he turns, and the door clicks behind him, and Jeongin closes his eyes into a content, peaceful quiet; he will not be alone for long.

3:15 pm [ minho-hyung ] jeonginie <3

3.15 pm [ minho-hyung ] if you tell channie hes a good boy he will cry happy tears

3.15 pm [minho-hyung ] and come over this evening jisungie has bought an improbable amount of alcohol <3

3:34 pm [ jeongin ] ………

3:39 pm [ jeongin ] noted, thanks

Something in Jeongin feels – settled, after that. The rest of the day passes easily, without fanfare, and he spends most of it doing very little. He practices vocal runs in the bathroom, listening to the way his voice echoes against the walls, feeling like he should be doing something , at least. But there isn’t much to be done. Except to wait for Chan to get home, which he does, trying not to be impatient about it.

He considers the others, too. Changbin’s words, and Minho’s and Seungmin’s, Felix’s. Hyunjin’s, briefly, and Jisung’s. Chan’s. How easily they all reflect each other. It feels like all of these loose ends are beginning to tie up, Jeongin thinks, when he reads, and then rereads, Minho’s texts and tries incredibly hard not to think about that, specifically. 

(Maybe during a longer break, he lets himself consider for two point five seconds. When rope burns aren’t a career-ending threat. And then he shuts that train of thought down very fast.)

He makes a valiant attempt at cleaning the apartment to jolt himself out of waiting mode, even though he honestly does not know what half the cleaning supplies Chan uses even do, and then considers clearing the older leftovers out of the fridge before discovering he is definitely not equipped to do that either. (Because, like, what if he is going to eat them? They’re not that old.) Jeongin gingerly wipes down the stovetop and excuses himself from the kitchen. Listen, if Chan enjoys that, who is Jeongin to take it from him?

He ends up embarrassingly engrossed in Valorant for a few hours to take his mind off things, trying not to create horribly whimsical analogies about support roles and tanks and Chan, always Chan, who takes every hit for the eight of them, who is a place to fall back when they need it – Jeongin is, at least, self-aware. He knows he’s being sappy. He can’t help it. Jisung has brought that out in him, the sweet selfconscious having of being with him, and every so often the tide from the ocean works its way upstream along the river and swells him with fondness again. Tidal bore, he thinks it’s called. When the moon reverses the river’s current, just for a moment. Just long enough to flood. 

Jeongin is onto his eighth game when the door clicks.

“Jeonginnie?”

“Ah, hyung,” Jeongin says, even when half his attention is on the game. He hears Chan come further inside, hears the clatter of his shoes in the entry hall, and the rustle of his coat, and then the faint padding of his footsteps.

“Jeongin-ah,” Chan says again, closer this time. Jeongin had left his bedroom door open, and the hinge creaks when Chan pushes it open. Jeongin chances a look at him: he looks tired, in a gentle sort of way, softly worn down by the day. Eroded, smooth around the edges. He’s holding his laptop, but he discards it on Jeongin’s bed to trail his hands over Jeongin’s shoulders instead, a brave kind of touch. Nothing he hasn’t done before, Jeongin thinks, but it’s – loaded, now. Different.

Jeongin presses the wrong key, casts his ultimate at a wall, winces, and then immediately gets sniped from behind. Well. “You made me lose my game, hyung,” he whines, but presses back into Chan’s touch with a sort of daring that sends a shiver through his whole body – Chan’s hands are broad and spidery where they’ve settled on his arms, and Jeongin thrills at the contact, the closeness. He’s – so normal about Chan’s hands. Always has been. One of Chan’s fingers traces a shape into Jeongin’s bicep, a letter Jeongin can’t quite parse with his brain coming alight all at once like this; when he speaks, he sounds fond, but also amused. Like he knows exactly what he’s doing.

“Sorry,” Chan says, a little smug, a little rumbly. Ugh. Ugh. Jeongin feels his body tremble, unbidden, and scowls when Chan laughs in earnest. “Our Iyennie is so cute, hey? It’s not like you’re touch-starved.”

“Touch-starved from you, ” Jeongin mumbles, mutinous and a little nonsensical, and spins his chair away from the game. He will not ignore an attractive man flirting with him just to win a match of Valorant. He’s not Felix. (He doesn’t think he’s physically capable of ignoring Chan, anyway, or any of the others – there’s a low-level hum of awareness each time they’re in the same room, a sense of consciousness of their position. Jeongin always notices them. Always feels them. For so long, orbiting them, he’d thought they hadn’t noticed him in turn.)

(Jeongin doesn’t usually like being wrong. He might make an exception, this once.)

Chan laughs, though. His hand shakes with it, a little, against Jeongin’s bicep. “What is that supposed to mean, huh? Hyung doesn’t give you enough attention?”

Something fizzles under Jeongin’s skin, something bubbling and hot. No, he thinks, hyung doesn’t give him enough attention. Not the kind he wants, now. “You know what I want,” he says, turning a little in his chair, rotating it so Chan is forced to move a little, to stand in between Jeongin’s thighs if he wants to keep his hands on Jeongin’s biceps.

Which Chan does, stepping between them even closer than he’d been standing before. Jeongin looks up at him like this, feels a swooping in his belly, something hot and arousing in his crotch, and then something blushing across his cheeks.

“Yeah, Jeonginnie,” Chan says, blinking slowly, fluttering his eyelashes, so close now that Jeongin can see the pores on his nose, “yeah, I know what you want.”

“You know how long I’ve wanted it,” Jeongin says, too, trying not to sound too petulant. He’s gotten this far, after all, and Chan’s hands are firmly positioned on his shoulders, stood between Jeongin’s legs. He tilts his head a little, lets his lips part in a way he hopes looks – sexy and appealing, and not like a fish out of water. It’s a strange inversion of Jisung at the kitchen table, Jeongin above him; this, more than anything, is what gives him the courage, that reminder of the eight-way plait of them, the pretty tangle. Jeongin presses both his hands against Chan’s waist, just above the swell of his ass. (A frankly unfair ass. Jeongin has been tormented by it over the years. He’s just a man.) “Come on, hyung.”

“Come on what?” Chan says, sounding a little too smug. He has no bad angles, Jeongin thinks with a sort of envious grumpiness, gazing up at him from below. “You gotta be specific, Jeonginnie.” His voice goes thicker like this, Jeongin notices, hoarser, his accent spinning up through his Korean in a way it very rarely gets – the same way Jeongin’s speech slants towards satoori when his head is whirling with arousal, the precise Seoul patterns coming undone around the edges with the rest of him. Just the core underneath, Jeongin thinks, just the trueness left – the flood washes all the rest away. Chan stands between Jeongin’s legs. He’s wearing jeans. Jeongin doesn’t think the fold at his crotch is just the denim.

“Minho-hyung,” Jeongin says, glancing up at Chan through his lashes, “told me you were well-behaved.” He drags one of his hands around the plane of Chan’s waist to palm at the inside of his thigh, avoiding where he wants it, gratified when Chan’s hips sort of – roll, not quite a jerk but a hurried sinuous shiver into Jeongin’s hand. Jeongin presses his thumb against the seam of denim at the crease of Chan’s thigh and tries not to laugh. “Was he wrong?”

Chan’s exhale is – controlled, at the very least, even if it seems to be waning. His breathing is just a little bit heavier, his knees a little weaker. Jeongin holds his waist tighter, as if he’s the driving force of Chan’s maintained upright position. “Minho said that?”

“Minho-hyung told me a lot of things,” Jeongin says, “and so did Seungmin-hyung, and the others,” which is not so much a lie as it is something Jeongin had extrapolated from what he’d actually been told. He squeezes his fingers around Chan’s body, digs his nails into the flesh of his abdomen, not as mean as with Jisung but enough that Chan inhales sharply all the same. “That you’re usually so good for him, right? That you’re a good boy.”

Now, Chan’s entire body reacts, shuddering through something as his brain parses Jeongin’s words, and then feeds them down through his entire nervous system. His eyes flutter, blinking shut in what Jeongin hopes is pleasure, and when he reopens them, his pupils are big enough that Jeongin can barely see a sliver of his iris. “Jeonginnie –”

“I know, hyung,” Jeongin says, toned down low. He moves one of his hands from Chan’s waist, moves it up, trails it gently over his chest and then cups Chan’s jaw. “I know.”

From there, he can guide Chan to lean down low, can pull himself up a little, closing the distance between them enough to catch Chan’s lips against his. Chan kisses – not like he wasn’t expecting it, but a little like he’s surprised to have found himself here all the same, like no matter how many times he’d imagined it, he’d never imagined it coming true. His mouth is plush and slick, moving against Jeongin’s with ease, like something fitting into place. Chan’s own hands shift from Jeongin’s shoulders to hold onto the back of his neck, his jaw, less as a control measure and more like Chan just wants something to – to hold. 

Jeongin tips their foreheads together as their lips part, murmurs, “I’m here, hyung. I’m not going anywhere.” He knows he’s understood correctly when Chan’s fingers flex against the column of his throat, somewhere between possessive and pleading; when Jeongin presses closer, kisses him again, Chan’s grip is gentler. Reassured. He sways into Jeongin’s body with the kiss. Jeongin feels the brilliant burn of arousal, the way it swells restless and familiar within the banks of his body – but it doesn’t feel as desperate, this time. He feels – not sated, but not starved. Patient enough to take his time. He is not going to have this snatched away from him, not this time.

The next time their lips part, Chan’s breathing is coming harder, faster. Jeongin gazes at the kissed-red flush to his lips and feels a little bit insane. He can feel his own chest heaving, heart pounding, and his fingertips thrum with his pulse. “Jeonginnie,” Chan says, pressing Jeongin’s name into his own skin. His hand twitches again. “Jeongin, please, come on –”

Jeongin doesn’t need to ask to know what Chan is asking for. He figures there isn’t much he wants to give that Chan wouldn’t like, in the first place. It makes it easy to lever himself up from the chair, to use his hold on Chan’s jaw, his hip, to manoeuvre them both. Chan goes easily, pliantly, like it doesn’t even cross his mind to think about resisting, and Jeongin kisses him again, pushes Chan down, back onto his bed with their lips still pressed together.

Chan makes a small noise of protest, when Jeongin carefully avoids his laptop, and then an even bigger noise when Jeongin pulls back enough that he can move and put Chan’s laptop on his desk instead. It’s so cute, it makes Jeongin wonder how he’ll ever look Chan in the eye again without thinking about it. His hands are greedy and wanting where they grasp at Jeongin’s body, like Chan can’t bear for him to go far, and his lips mouth at the cusp of Jeongin’s jaw, his neck, down the swell of his collarbones. At least, until Jeongin can get their mouths pressed back together, which he does as soon as he possibly can.

We could have been doing this for years, Jeongin thinks, petulant, but he’s not even upset – just wants to make up for lost time, drags his tongue over the swell of Chan’s lips and then grazes them with his teeth, wants to drag so much blood to the surface that he wakes up still looking thoroughly kissed even tomorrow. Chan’s hands settle at Jeongin’s waist for a moment but don’t stay still, work their way up beneath his shirt just like Jisung’s had; Jeongin breaks the kiss to laugh gently for a moment, overcome by the sweet affectionate humour that ripples through both their bodies where they’re touching. Chan’s brow wrinkles.

“What,” he says, breathless, smiling too.

“You can’t get enough of me,” Jeongin says. He feels his own smile, broad and almost silly, sprawling across his cheeks. “You want me so bad.”

Red flushes through Chan’s cheeks, staining beneath his skin that Jeongin wonders if he’ll just be stuck like that for the rest of his life. He smiles, too, like he knows Jeongin is joking, but he answers, “yeah, Jeonginnie,” like he’s completely serious, laid bare, “yeah, I do.”

Jeongin doesn’t know quite what to do with that. He kisses Chan about it, bites into his lips, digs fingertips into Chan’s hips hard enough he hopes they bruise. What had Jisung said about marks – anywhere that can’t be seen? Yeah, Jeongin can do that. 

Chan kisses back just as eagerly, at least, and his hands aren’t quite so mean but just as needy where they slide against Jeongin’s abdomen, over his waist, his chest, brushing past his nipples lightly. Like now he’s gotten a touch, a taste, Chan doesn’t want to let go. Jeongin knows the feeling. He squirms when Chan brushes over one of his nipples again, then immediately regrets it when Chan zeroes in on it, murmurs, “You sensitive, Jeonginnie?”

“No,” Jeongin says. His breath catches in his throat when Chan drags a deliberate thumb over the bud of his left nipple, something pleasant squirming down the length of his body and setting him languorously alight. “Maybe. No.”

“Right,” Chan murmurs, indulgent. The warm darkness in his gaze is so fond it hurts to look at; Jeongin shuts his eyes, feels joy swell through the marrow of him, lets Chan’s touch exist against a backdrop of the dark behind his eyelids. Each sweep of his hands, every place they touch, is flame in the night. 

When Chan kisses him now, Jeongin finds himself exhaling soft against his lips, something gasping in time with Chan’s fingers along his body. Chan responds in kind, breathing into Jeongin’s mouth, teeth pressing bluntly into his lips. “Hyung,” Jeongin manages, water lapping at the shore, lips breaching the seam of Chan’s.

“Jeonginnie,” Chan echoes, teeth against Jeongin’s. “What do you want? Tell me what you want.”

There is not enough time in the universe, Jeongin thinks, for him to articulate quite precisely everything he wants from Chan. But he can start now; cycling oxygen back into Chan’s lungs, he can put words to it. “Want to fuck you,” he murmurs against Chan’s lips, impressed by the clarity of his own words, at his ability to be explicit. It seems so strange, now, to just say it. He has spent seven years swallowing down these words, and now they break the banks of his teeth with almost effortless furor. “I want – fuck. Hyung. ” He trembles as Chan’s fingers splay across his ribcage, is certain that Chan can feel the butterfly tremble of his heartbeat as it tears its wings free of the chrysalis of his skin. “Want to – bite your stupid fucking abs, can I do that, can I please –”

“Yeah,” Chan murmurs, sweet, soothing, gentle. He lets Jeongin mouth his way down the column of his throat, restrained until he works his way below where a shirt collar would fall. Then Jeongin hesitates – Chan shows his chest, takes off his shirt, it belongs to the cameras as much as his face sometimes – but Chan threads fingers into Jeongin’s hair, says low, hoarse, “It’s okay, you’re okay. I don’t need to,” like he knows what Jeongin’s thinking, like he knows Jeongin inside and out. “It’s alright, you’re – take what you need, sweetheart.” Jeongin makes a wounded little sound against the arcing underside of his pec, clutches clumsy and greedy at wherever he can reach – Chan’s back, his legs, his stupid fucking ass that has tested Jeongin’s patience. He can’t think. He fits his lips to the swell of Chan’s tummy, gets his teeth in, listens to the contented little sound Chan makes as he relaxes into the sting. 

He bites once, twice, moves to nip at the thin skin across Chan’s ribs, leaving blossoming little bruises across the span of his chest. Not as dark as the one Minho had given him, Jeongin thinks, but more of them, scattered across Chan’s body. “You’re sure?” he manages to ask, when Chan offers himself up to him, anything Jeongin wants he’d give, Jeongin’s pretty sure.

Chan hums something, a murmur caught in his throat. His body arches into Jeongin’s touch. “Mm. Yeah. Maybe… let me fuck you? Let me make you feel good, wanna make you feel good, Jeonginnie –”

Yeah, Jeongin thinks, fuck. Yeah. They can do that, too. “You wanna make me feel good?” he repeats, and then flicks his tongue over Chan’s nipple until he whines. “Yeah – yeah, you can make me feel good, hyung –”

“Is that okay?” Chan asks, and there – there it is. The thin, wavering uncertainty. Jeongin had wondered if, when, he’d brush up against it, where Chan’s line was. Where he’s willing to ask for what he wants and where he’s willing to take what he gets given. 

Jeongin pulls back to stare at him, a little incredulously. “Do you expect me to say no, I don’t want you to fuck me?”

Chan’s eyes widen, and then his brow furrows a little. “Well – if you didn’t want to – yeah?”

Jeongin blinks at him. He’s so turned on, he feels a little lightheaded, and so he takes one of Chan’s hands from where it’s been grazing along the sensitive skin of his ribs and moves it down to his crotch, slow enough that Chan could resist, once he realises what Jeongin’s doing. “Does it look like I don’t want that?” Jeongin asks, low, trying desperately not to buck into Chan’s hand as he trails it over Jeongin’s dick. “ Hyung . I want that.”

Above him, Chan’s throat bobs as he swallows; Jeongin shudders, wants to squirm back up along his body to mouth at it like he’s dreamed of doing but can’t drag himself away from the ghost of Chan’s touch against his clothed cock. “Thought,” Chan says, somehow at once delicate and rough, like he’s trying to tread lightly but has been sanded around the edges, “you might – might not wanna –” He palms Jeongin with more pressure, then hisses through his teeth as Jeongin groans. “I just – it’s not you. I don’t – I get very. Vulnerable. When I’m, um, taking, and you don’t have to – I don’t want to put that on you, and –”

“Shut the fuck up and touch me,” Jeongin mumbles. Chan gets his long fingers around the outline of Jeongin’s cock through his pants, and Jeongin shudders again, the sensation breaking through what he can contain within his body. “Take my clothes off, hyung, shit. ”

Chan, at least, seems to know what to do with that, because he curls his fingers under the hem of Jeongin’s shirt and pulls, and Jeongin wriggles out of it quicker than he thinks he’s ever taken a shirt off in his life. Chan tosses it to the side, somewhere, and looks at Jeongin like he’s never seen him naked before.

Well, Jeongin allows, maybe not quite like this. That still healing bite on his neck, the faint marks of irritation on his hips, where Jisung had held him earlier. He interrupts Chan’s staring by tugging off his own t-shirt, pulling it over Chan’s head with a little more difficulty, because Chan seems physically incapable of removing his hands from Jeongin’s body for any period of time.

“Hyung, let me –”

“No, it’s –” Chan reaches again for Jeongin’s chest, seeming almost transfixed, and promptly gets his shirt impressively tangled around his head. One of his hands is still splayed across Jeongin’s ribs. He swears, yanking the shirt off with more fervour than is probably necessary, and can’t quite meet Jeongin’s eyes; his cheeks are ruddy with embarrassment.

Jeongin snickers, and then immediately feels bad about it. “Hyung,” he says, shifting until he can settle in Chan’s lap; it sends a giddy little thrill through him, the way Chan shivers as Jeongin grinds down onto him. At least Chan isn’t spiralling about looking silly now. Jeongin has never felt this present, this brilliantly within his body, as when he reaches out and cups Chan’s jaw with one of his hands, braces the other on the meat of Chan’s chest; this is Chan-hyung, mentor, friend, first crush, last love, nothing Jeongin could have until he was everything, and it doesn’t feel so impossible any more to hold him like a lover. Special, certainly, but not dreamlike. No – Jeongin is marvelously awake. He shifts his hips again, brushes a thumb over Chan’s lips, feels his dick twitch beneath him. 

“You’re so fucking beautiful, ” Chan says, hoarse, horrifyingly earnest, and it’s nothing Jeongin hasn’t heard before from the lips of millions but it’s different like this, with Chan’s gaze his spotlight, the singularity of his audience. Not cute, not pretty boy, but beautiful. Heady, weighted. Jeongin’s gaze darts away, somewhere, anywhere that isn’t the too-honest dark of Chan’s dilated pupils, and Chan says quick, rough, “No, look at me when I’m talking to you.”

And how can Jeongin not, not drag his eyes back to Chan’s, even when it rankles. When it sends something sharp and electrifying down his spine, to sit here like this, grind his hips back against Chan’s, to meet his eye and let Chan call him – call him beautiful. “Hyung –” God, he needs Chan inside him, yesterday. He can feel it too, Chan’s growing arousal, the heavy weight of his cock in his jeans, pressing against Jeongin’s ass despite the resistance of the denim. “Hyung, please, I –”

Chan’s hips twitch, even with Jeongin’s body weight atop them. Fuck, Jeongin reminds himself, fuck, don’t think about Chan doing hipthrusts, seriously don’t, before he comes in his pants like a teenager. “I know, Iyennie,” Chan says, words coming smooth out of his mouth, where Jeongin’s tongue feels too big for his. “You gonna let me fuck you?”

Jeongin feels himself flush at the easy explicitness of it, at the way Chan’s hands settle broad and comfortable on his hips again, maybe just the way he would if Jeongin were – if he – like some fascimile of Jeongin riding him, still clothed but with his knees bracketing Chan’s, with Chan ready to guide his hips. Just right. Just like that, he’d say, and – Jeongin makes an embarrassing little sound. Needy. But Chan grips his hips tighter at the noise, something wild to his eyes at it – of course, Jeongin thinks, because he knows this. Chan likes to be needed. Of course it would get to him.

“Yeah,” Jeongin says, quiet, stripped raw by the way Chan keeps looking at him. “Please.”

Chan makes a low noise somewhere between a groan and a reassuring murmur, reaches up to get his arms around Jeongin’s waist – and then flips them easily, gently, without desperation or speed, like he doesn’t need to struggle to get Jeongin on his back. Jeongin feels his cock jump; he just hopes Chan didn’t notice, because he does not think he could live with that knowledge being out there. 

Chan doesn’t say anything, at least, but Jeongin can feel the way his chest flutters with something like laughter, not quite teasing and more like he’s just happy to be there. Chan kisses him again too, pressing his opened mouth against Jeongin’s, his smile against Jeongin’s. “Good,” he says, whispered between them, and then, “you’ve – done this before, right?”

It doesn’t… ruin the mood, Jeongin thinks, but he can tell his face does something that Chan responds to in kind. “Had sex, hyung? Yes, I’ve done that before,” he says, a little incredulous, and endeared, and annoyed at himself for being endeared by it. 

Chan’s face reddens again, though, cheeks flaming up. He doesn’t move to hide his face, but he looks like he wants to. “Okay, okay! I’m just checking, just making sure that – that you know what to expect.”

“There’s lube under the bed,” Jeongin says crossly, more play-acting his irritation than feeling any real annoyance. “From, you know, me having anal sex. Since I’m an adult and all.”

“Jeonginnie,” Chan protests, leaning down to press his face into the soft part of Jeongin’s tummy, its lines gentled by water and wanting. Jeongin tries not to jump at the sensation of breath against his skin. “Be nice, okay. Hyung is – is, uh –”

“Is not inside me yet and therefore should hurry up,” Jeongin says, because if he doesn’t act like a brat he thinks he might spontaneously dissolve into a puddle of goo and therefore talking shit is, like, necessary for his survival at the current moment. He threads his fingers into Chan’s hair, uses it to tilt his head up so that they’re looking at each other. “Please, hyung,” Jeongin adds, leaves his lips parted when he’s finished speaking. He knows what he looks like. He knows how to look good. He knows how long Chan has been looking at him, how hard Chan has always found it to say no to Jeongin, how difficult not to give him everything he asks for.

“Okay, okay,” Chan says, and then doesn’t say much else. He trails off, too busy staring at Jeongin, at the plump swell of his lips, his eyes, his cheeks. Jeongin feels Chan’s gaze flickering across every point of his face, cataloguing it. Which is nice, for a little while, but Jeongin can feel Chan’s dick, knows Chan can probably feel his too. He’s been waiting this long.

“Hyung, have you done this before?” he asks, trying to spur Chan into movement, and partly to tease him. It works: Chan flushes, right to the tips of his ears, and pinches at Jeongin’s nipples harsher than he has so far. Jeongin feels his entire body jolt, sparking up and down his spine, and bites down hard on his tongue to muffle the moan that threatens to spill out of his mouth.

“Aish, who raised you to be such a brat?” Chan asks, like he already knows the answer. “Let me hear you, okay, baby? I’ve been waiting to hear you for so long.”

“Whose fault is that,” Jeongin says grumpily. His tongue kind of hurts. “Get your fingers inside me and maybe I’ll make noises for you then, huh?”

Chan seems torn; his fingers and his gaze drag themselves together over the planes of Jeongin’s chest, his stomach, burning equally bright. But he draws away, even though he makes a little disgruntled sound as he goes. Probably to fumble in the absolute mess that is beneath Jeongin’s bed, where he just shoves things he intends to deal with in the morning and then – doesn’t, like his lube and a mostly-clean jacket and at least two contracts he told the company lawyers he’d lost. 

Jeongin blinks up at his ceiling, arousal twisting vivid and slow-burning through the coals of his body. He can’t remember the last time someone else was in his bed. Since moving in with Chan, this space has been so wholly his own, the privacy a new and startling luxury; here, chest bare to his bedroom ceiling, Jeongin is neither hot nor cold because he and Chan have their apartment’s thermostat set just how they both like it, and Chan is rustling around beneath his bed, and he should be embarrassed but can’t drag it out from his stomach. Instead, fondness sits, a warm hopeful glow, in his chest and his throat and his bones.

“Jeonginnie,” Chan says, from somewhere out of Jeongin’s eyeline. “Is this a brand deal? ”

“Um,” Jeongin says. He stares at the ceiling, even when he sees Chan’s head appear in his peripheral vision. “No? Can you fuck me now?”

He doesn’t need to look at Chan to know the way he smiles – a little exasperated, something softer, amused and loving – as he tosses the paper towards Jeongin’s desk. Jeongin glances at it, grimaces when he recalls the negotiations they’d had to do for it. There’s probably about three different iterations of the same contract somewhere in his room. Chan tosses his bottle of lube up next to Jeongin shortly after that, though, so Jeongin files it away to never be thought of again instead.

“You really need to tidy up under there,” Chan says, in a way that is not quite sexy even though it’s coming out of Chan’s mouth. “There’s a t-shirt down there I thought I’d lost.”

“Ah, hyung,” Jeongin grimaces again. He remembers when Chan had first complained about losing it; he’d told him one of the other boys must have it, or it’d gotten mixed up in their laundry. He meets Chan’s eyes, tries to fix his face into something alluring, tempting, spreads his legs just a little wider. “Fuck me?”

“You,” Chan says, halfway to laughter in that sort of rueful, frustrated way, “are so –” He cuts himself off, and Jeongin feels the bed dip as Chan clambers back up, somehow managing to move both clumsily and with a sort of hungry grace, skimming his hands up the insides of Jeongin’s legs in parallel with each other. Just the barest suggestion of pressure. Jeongin’s breath snags in his throat as Chan spreads his still-clothed legs against the bed in earnest, a mockery of being spread open. Through his pants, he can feel the pinpricks of pressure where the pads of Chan’s fingers press a little too hard into his thighs.

Jeongin says, heart in his throat, “So what?”

“Huh?” Chan says absently. His eyes rove over the sparse smattering of hair on Jeongin’s lower belly, the outline of his hard cock in his pants, made obscenely clear by the way his legs are spread like this. He mouths something that might be fuck. His eyes are very dark. He also still hasn’t even taken Jeongin’s pants off.

“Chan-hyung,” Jeongin says again, waiting until Chan looks at his face and not just his body. “What am I so ?”

Chan shakes his head, like disbelief, like he isn’t quite sure how he got here. Got this far. He doesn’t answer, just leans forward again until he can hold himself up on one elbow, bicep tantalisingly close to Jeongin’s face. He gets his mouth against Jeongin’s again, keeps his hands at Jeongin’s hips. It’s hard to focus on anything with Chan’s lips against his like this, Jeongin thinks, but he can feel Chan fiddling with the zipper on his jeans, the button, until he can get his hand inside them, and graze delicate fingers over Jeongin’s cock. 

Jeongin feels all the muscles in his abdomen twitch, feels a moan catch against Chan’s mouth. He thought he’d known want before this, but desire seems to mean something different here. He doesn’t think he’s ever been so turned on in his life. Chan’s stupid fucking bicep is right there, and Jeongin squirms slightly in place so he can get his mouth on it, jolting when the movement drags Chan’s hand against his shaft again. 

His body is made of the things it wants. Jeongin exists in flashes of sensation: his teeth grazing Chan’s bicep, and then the fleeting brilliant rush of pressure as Chan groans and presses his hips flush with Jeongin’s, his hand trapped between them. Denim on skin. Chan, here, real. The scent of his shampoo; it’s always lingered in their bathroom, caught up by the steam whenever Jeongin wraps a hand around his cock in the shower and muffles himself into his arm because all he can smell is Chan, always Chan.

“Hyung,” he breathes. It comes out small, needy. “Please, please, I’ve – I’ve waited, I promise I want it.”

Something in Chan seems to fracture and break. He exhales roughly against Jeongin’s cheek, flexes his bicep. Says, softly, against Jeongin’s skin, “I know, you have,” and, “I’ll give it to you, Jeongin-ah, you’ve been so patient, hm?” and then his hands, pulling at Jeongin’s pants, tugging them down and then off and taking his boxers with them. Jeongin is white-water tossed. There is no space to breathe. “I’m sorry I made you wait so long.”

“Make it up to me now,” Jeongin says, getting his fingers tangled in Chan’s hair, pulling him in close. It’s a struggle, to remove Chan’s own clothes like this, but they manage. And then Chan is back on top of him, closer than before, skin hot against Jeongin’s. His knee in between Jeongin’s thighs, his arms on either side of Jeongin’s head. Maybe it’s the brief pressure of Chan’s quad against the soft skin behind his balls, or the still-heady too-familiar scent of him, or the storm surge of blood away from his brain to settle and throb in his weepy, flushed cock where it sits against his stomach; whatever it is, something turns over in Jeongin’s head, settles tight and needy in his throat. “Please,” he says again, hoarse, voice very small still. “Hyung.”

“Yeah, yes,” Chan murmurs, soothing. His hair, shaggier than it has been for a while, haloes his face in shadow against the ceiling light; Jeongin closes his eyes for a moment, overcome by the closeness of him, the familiar angles of his face. He knows Chan’s lips so well. Has loved his eyes for so long. And here they are, brow knit with a sort of delicate intensity, creased in the precursors to pleasure as Chan hovers above him; it’s so much. It’s too much. It’s perfect. Jeongin feels Chan’s weight shift against him in the darkness of his eyelids, then one hand skimming up the inside of his thigh again, spreading his legs, with a sort of deliberate pressure like Chan doesn’t have the patience for featherlight touches. His fingers brush dry and sweet over the base of Jeongin’s cock. Jeongin feels his hips jump; Chan’s hand comes up to splay over his hipbone, sitting a little heavier, like a reminder to behave.

Jeongin is so normal. He’s so fine. He flutters his eyes back open, looks at Chan through his eyelashes, watches the way Chan’s face twitches, the tick of his eyebrow and quirk of his lips. Chan’s hand digs into his hip for a second, and then snakes back around to brush over Jeongin’s cock again, twisting over the head and smearing precome across his palm. Jeongin’s hips twitch, his leg spasms, and he bites down hard on his lip before Chan’s touch can wrench some embarrassing noise out of him.

Chan’s hand pauses over his dick. Jeongin feels himself twitch and jerk in Chan’s hold, light as it is. “Let me hear you,” he says, softly. “I’ve thought about hearing you for so long, Ayennie. Let me hear it now.”

It makes Jeongin want to die, a little. Chan moves his hand again, a little firmer, stroking up and down his shaft, and this time Jeongin doesn’t bite his lip against the sound that gasps out of him. God. God. “You’re still not inside me,” he says, instead of something embarrassing like I love you, I always have, or hyung, please, feels good, please. “Chan-hyung. You had one job.”

Chan’s laugh bubbles out of him so easily it feels like it’s diffusing through the border of Jeongin’s skin, settling into his bloodstream, giddy and giggly like champagne. “At least two jobs,” Chan says, and he’s such a dork, and Jeongin likes him so much it makes him look stupid, or however the quote goes, and Chan thumbs over the head of Jeongin’s cock and then shudders when Jeongin gives a quiet little cry in response. “Sequentially. Unless you’re enough of a slut for me that you’re already nice and wet and open, hey? But I don’t think so. Not this time, at least.”

Jesus fucking Christ. Jeongin feels like he has been hit over the head, possibly with a hammer or an orgasm. He writhes beneath the bracket of Chan’s body. “Hyung,” he says, high, needy, shaking, “hyung, you gotta stop – stop touching me or stop talking like that or I’m gonna – I want to –”

“Not a problem, Jeonginnie,” Chan says, too easily, too sweet. “You need to come?”

“ No, ” Jeongin bites out, frustration braiding itself with the arousal that makes it almost impossible to think. Chan’s stupid long fingers trace gently up and down the length of his cock, featherlight now, less insistent – just as well, otherwise Jeongin genuinely thinks he might have come the moment he heard Chan say the word slut. Fucking Seungmin. Or Minho, maybe. Or maybe Jeongin is just that easy to read; then again, he’s always been easy, he considers, for Chan. That’s the problem.

“I have waited,” Jeongin says, trembling, “for years to come on your cock, hyung, do not make me settle for your hands now. Please. ”

“Baby,” Chan says, eyes so dark, so sweet. “I have it on good authority you have at least two in you.”

He’s not wrong, Jeongin thinks, bitterly. All things considered, he’ll come as many times as Chan wants him to tonight. But that doesn’t solve the problem now , which is that Chan has got neither his fingers nor his cock inside Jeongin, and is taking a long time paying attention to the wet head of his dick instead. Jeongin opens his mouth to complain once more, but Chan moves before he can, before Jeongin’s brain can quite catch up to what he’s doing, slicking up three of his fingers liberally. He trails one, cold, lube-damp, along the inside of Jeongin’s thigh, makes him shiver and whine until Chan’s fingertip ghosts over the rim of his hole too.

Jeongin’s done this before. He’s not entirely sure why it feels like – like he’s doing it anew, for the first time, with Chan. His body shudders under Chan’s touch, like no one’s ever touched it before. Even when Chan smiles at him, at the way his body jolts, and eases one slow finger into Jeongin’s hole. Down to the first knuckle, and then Chan thrusts once, twice. Jeongin feels caught between it, suspended by Chan’s touch. He whines like a wounded animal, unmade by the force of his own desire, the sudden fullness, the shocky little jolt of Chan’s knuckles brushing against his balls as he thrusts; it’s a lot, is all. It’s so much. Jeongin likes to think he’s reasonably good at this, but Chan makes it feel so effortlessly overwhelming.

“Hyung,” he breathes, fighting the urge to press into Chan’s touch, trembling with the effort of holding himself still. Chan’s other hand braces itself broad and spidery over the jut of his hipbone, holding him in place. 

“Yeah?” Chan murmurs, so fucking gentle. He works his fingers inside Jeongin with a sort of absent ease, like it’s nothing to learn exactly what makes Jeongin cry out, like it’s no big deal to work out how to make him fall apart. Jeongin usually tries to distract himself when he’s getting fingered, finds it mildly uncomfortable, doesn’t like the initial stretch the way Beomgyu used to wax lyrical about – but it’s different, with Chan. Chan’s long fingers. The fucking knob of his knuckle; maybe Jeongin is losing his mind, but he thinks he can actually feel each time it tugs at the rim of his hole, thinks of Chan’s veiny hands, tries not to float out of his body at the idea that those fingers – one of them, at least, is inside him. Here. Finally. Jeongin rolls his hips into Chan’s movements, then feels his breath snag in his throat at the barest brush of something against his prostate – one of Chan’s fingers, barely minutes in, and Jeongin is blinking floaters out of his eyes. 

“Yeah,” Jeongin breathes, greedy, wanting, allowed. Gasps, something desperate and ragged, torn out of him, “hyung, another, please –” and Chan’s laughter spills out of his mouth, over Jeongin’s skin, like water.

“Already?” Chan says, but a second finger pushes into Jeongin’s hole, still careful and slow. Frustratingly so. “You’re sure none of the others fucked you yet? You take it so well, Jeongin-ah.”

Jeongin feels himself grinding down into the pressure of Chan’s hand, working his hips as much as he can. Chan doesn’t seem inclined to stop him, but he does move his legs a little, spreading his own knee so that Jeongin’s are forced to stay held apart. It impedes the movement a little, something just out of reach. The push-pull, tides dragging, makes Jeongin feel a little insane. Enough that he moans about it, louder than he quite expected to. Chan groans in response, low and tender and, yeah, fuck it, loving, sweet, the sound of it the perfect frequency to resonate through Jeongin’s ribcage and set his chest to singing. “Fuck,” Chan almost sighs, the word flayed upon his hoarse breathing. “You’re so –”

“So what,” Jeongin says, trying to tell himself he isn’t pleading. He tries again to work himself back onto Chan’s fingers, to fuck them deeper into himself by squirming his hips, but Chan chuckles a little and holds still until Jeongin gives a frustrated groan and settles. Only then does Chan move his fingers again. “Hyung. Fuck!”

“So everything,” Chan says, a little bit inanely; Jeongin could care less, given the way he crooks his fingers inside him, like he’s learning how Jeongin feels from the inside out, the way he makes Jeongin jolt on the bed again with just the barest, maddening brush over his prostate. “I don’t know, Jeonginnie, pretty? Hot? Do I get to say all of the above?”

“You’re such a dork, ” Jeongin says, incensed. “I can’t believe I’m letting you fuck me.”

“You’re begging me to fuck you,” Chan corrects, passively, and then thrusts his fingers in a way that is decidedly not, right on target. It’s like he knows exactly how to play Jeongin’s body, mapped out with his hands. And then he stops thrusting, holds his fingers still. Jeongin clenches down on them, bites his lip against the groan of frustration that threatens to boil over. “See?” says Chan, like he’s stating the obvious, “look how badly you want this, Jeonginnie. Don’t you?”

Yeah, Jeongin thinks, it’s pretty fucking obvious. He might cry about it. “Chan-hyung, please, just fuck me. I’ve – I waited –”

“You were busy getting off with all the other boys while you were waiting,” Chan says, something hot and boiling in his tone. Nothing so accusatory, but more like… like he’s interested. Like he likes it. But he starts moving his fingers again, and then stretches Jeongin out enough to take a third, too.

“You’re not that big,” Jeongin mumbles. He is pretty sure he’s lying. 

“Want to find out?” Chan teases. He keeps oscillating into this sort of glorious confidence, like, if nothing else, he knows how to carry himself with his fingers inside another man, like he knows his way around his own sexuality; it’s the same way he settles into himself in the studio, Jeongin thinks. That sense of I know what I’m doing here. The sinuous comfort in his own body that Chan carries, here, now, like this. Jeongin’s Chan-hyung is a kind, silly loser who makes him coffee in the morning, and a fucking genius with a soundboard the moment the clock ticks past one in the morning, and he’s this, too: sweet and teasing in bed, something insistent lurking just below the surface of his eyes. Jeongin has to live with this knowledge and not be sitting on Chan’s cock at all hours of the day going forwards. It’s an injustice, is what it is. Chan twists his fingers inside Jeongin again, avoiding his prostate with the same ease that he’d found it the second time, and says around his laughter, “You’re so cute, Jeonginnie.”

“Shut up,” Jeongin grumbles. “Hurry up.”

“Is that any way to ask for something?” Chan says, teasing, light, but he moves his fingers a little more, brushes over Jeongin’s prostate enough to tease, and then he pulls his fingers out, sitting back a little. Jeongin makes a noise that’s – embarrassing, so embarrassing – like some dying creature, finds his hands clawing into Chan’s shoulders desperately. As if that would do anything. Chan just giggles, cute and boyish. “If you want me to fuck you, you have to let me take my pants off, honey.”

Jeongin groans, again, makes his displeasure known when Chan shuffles even further back. But then he gets to watch as Chan’s fingers undo his jeans, the veins in stark relief, shadowed in the light, and the tendons in Chan’s wrist shifting under his skin. And then as Chan hooks his fingers in the waistband, pushes them down and kicks them off and sits back on his knees in just his underwear, cock straining at the fabric in a way that makes Jeongin’s mouth actually water. Maybe Chan is that big. Figures, probably. It makes sense. Jeongin feels lightheaded. He had thought he was – emotionally prepared for this, after months of surreptitiously trying not to stare at Chan’s dick print in those stupid grey sweatpants, but – of course Chan is a grower. Why not! Why fucking not!

“The moment you put that in me you owe Seungmin money,” Jeongin says, because he tends to blurt out the first thing that comes to mind when he’s too horny to think straight. It’s kind of a problem. “And you owe me – reparations. Emotionally. For damages.”

“I think the bet included fingering, Jeonginnie,” Chan says, too fond for his own good. He skims a hand over Jeongin’s thigh; his eyes are very dark. “And, hey, you’re the one who’s been flexing your arms in front of my face because you wanted this. Maybe I should get emotional damages.”

Jeongin can’t think. He feels fucked-empty, ready, needy. “It worked, though?”

“Clearly,” Chan says ruefully. He groans, leaning down to press his lips to Jeongin’s belly, scraping his teeth over the skin like he’s trying to lick away the sweat. What a freak. Jeongin likes him so much it’s bad for his health. “Fucking hell, Jeonginnie. Look at you.”

“Or don’t,” Jeongin says. “Less looking would also be fine. More touching. That’s also very much an option.”

Chan laughs again, breath cold against the spit he’s left on Jeongin’s skin. He shivers, tries to ignore the way his leg tenses up, his cock jumps. “I’m touching you already.”

“How many times do I have to ask?” Jeongin says, complaining, moaning. “ How are you so patient about this, if you’ve been waiting as long as I have?” He needs Chan’s dick in him yesterday.

“Patience is a virtue,” Chan says, wisely, but he hooks his fingers in the waistband of his underwear, too, pulls it down just far enough to reveal the dips of his hipbones.

“There is nothing virtuous about the way you just fingered me,” Jeongin says, resisting the urge to reach over and take Chan’s pants off for him. “And I hope there’ll be nothing virtuous about the way you’re about to fuck me, either.” 

Chan pulls his underwear another centimetre out the way. Jeongin wants to scream. He wants to dig his teeth into the flesh of Chan’s abs, the swell of it over his hips. “You know I’ll take care of you, Ayen-ah,” Chan says, and his fingers dip a little further into his boxers even if he doesn’t move them any lower.

Jeongin wants to scream. “Do you need help taking your clothes off, hyung?” he demands, feels his fingers twitching, desperate and needy. He swallows. Chan is still between his legs, but he spreads them wider, knows he looks slutty but doesn’t care, wants Chan to want him, wants Chan to act like it. Jeongin tips his head back because he knows the way Chan looks at his throat. Lets himself shiver. His cock slaps against his own stomach with a wet sort of sound, and Jeongin tries not to cringe, but Chan, at least, swears in English; when Jeongin glances up again, he’s got his hand inside his boxers, fisting his cock loosely, where Jeongin can’t even see it. The fucking injustice. “Hyung,” Jeongin whines, “seriously. ”

Chan’s knuckles are silhouetted against his underwear from inside them; he makes slow, deliberate eye contact and twists his fist down the length of his cock. A noise bursts unbidden from Jeongin’s throat. He wants it, fucking needs it, has been waiting. His blood boils through his body. It might feel almost cruel, if the faint humiliation didn’t sting just right, if it didn’t make arousal coil through him to know how desperate he is for Chan to fuck him into tomorrow. The mouth of the river yawns wide and wanting within him. Chan says, hushed, “Jeonginnie. You know I’d give you anything you asked for.”

Then give it to me, Jeongin wants to cry, wants to kick and scream about it. But Chan seems done waiting too: he fists his cock once more, knuckles pressing against the fabric, and Jeongin looks at the tension in his forearm and the way his thighs tense up and the way Chan bites his lip. And then Chan lifts up a little, tugs his underwear off, down his thighs and kicking it away until he’s finally, finally , naked. He gets his hand back on his dick almost as soon as he tosses his clothes to the side, kneeling beside Jeongin, legs spread. Jeongin might die? He really feels like he might die?

“You’re still sure about this?” Chan asks, as if Jeongin hasn’t ever been more sure about anything. He holds his cock at the base, stares at Jeongin with dark, heady eyes. Fuck. Jeongin barely has the presence of mind to nod, so distracted by the visual Chan makes right now: something confident, sexy, something Jeongin wants to get his fucking teeth into. 

“Please,” Jeongin says. Chan bites his lip, something like joy working its way across his face, then braces himself over Jeongin and presses the head of his cock against Jeongin, still hesitating, just a moment longer. Jeongin almost doesn’t mind. Here, he thinks – Chan looming above him with a brow furrowed in concentration and one arm flexed frankly obscenely and right there, with his hair curly from the sweat and falling into his eyes – here, with Chan’s skin pressed against Jeongin’s, both of them sticky with sweat and desire – here is the familiar space between wanting and having, wound up into one moment of it. 

The world boils down into the singularity of their shared desire. The river comes home to the sea. Jeongin wants Chan’s cock in him yesterday, but – this, too, is good, is impossible, is something he thought he’d never get to have. Chan’s lip caught between his lower teeth. His eyes half-lidded with lust. Chan, Chan, looking at Jeongin like he really fucking wants him, like it’s a need, like he wasn’t strong enough to fight it.

“Jeonginnie,” Chan whispers, hoarse, tender. “Can –”

“Yes,” Jeongin blurts, before he can even finish the sentence. He’s not even annoyed about the way Chan keeps asking; it’s the same way Chan will glance over every so often when they’re recording, the way Chan will do headcounts at the airport even though they have managers whose literal job it is to do the same, the way Chan will ask whether Jeongin has eaten and then not have dinner himself. It’s who he is. Jeongin really fucking loves him. “Yes, hyung, yeah,” Jeongin breathes, and Chan makes a long low sound and slides home into him; Jeongin fights to relax into the sensation, settles, lets himself melt into it with a sigh.

Of fucking course he’s big. But the force of Jeongin’s wanting is bigger. Chan’s forehead presses against his, noses together, and he exhales heavily into Jeongin’s open mouth. Jeongin can’t even bring himself to breathe, Chan’s cock in him is so – feels so much bigger than it had looked. And it had looked big. He tries to inhale and feels it get stuck somewhere near his lungs, caught on a moan.

“Fuck,” Chan says, his lips catching against Jeongin’s like he wants to kiss him. Jeongin doesn’t think he has the mental capacity for kissing right now, like getting Chan’s dick in him has very firmly knocked all of the brain cells out of his head. Making thoughts happen is like trying to strike a damp match, caught in the flood. “Fuck, Jeonginnie. Ayennie. Baby.”

Well, Jeongin can agree with that. Fuck . He gasps out another moan, and then another puff of air when Chan draws his hips back slowly. Chan swallows the sound he makes; his hands feel like they’re everywhere, braced on Jeongin’s hips and then skimming over his belly and then dragging nails over his arms, like Chan is touching every part of him at once. Jeongin shudders. “Hyung,” he breathes, does and doesn’t recognise his voice. Wanting. He knows the neediness of it. But having, too, like here is the voice of someone with Bang Chan’s cock inside them, like – like the version of Jeongin who was brave enough to ask for what he wanted. Like that self-assured Jeongin in the mirror. Like it had all been bringing him back to this: Jeongin pinned on his own bed, blinking tears from the corners of his eyes, muffling his sounds against Chan’s lips. Chan works his cock back into Jeongin in slow, piecemeal grinds of his hips, and Jeongin twitches each time he moves, gasps against him, “Chan-hyung. ”

“Yeah,” Chan murmurs. His voice is thick with emotion. Jeongin had expected to be railed, but – this, this gentle implacable grind, is somehow more devastating, is almost worse. Better. Both. Chan cups a hand against Jeongin’s jaw, says, worried, “Baby. Jeonginnie. You’re okay?”

“Good,” Jeongin insists. Wants to make a snarky comment, but can’t string together the pieces of it; each time he starts putting together a sentence, another grind of Chan inside him scatters it anew into the white-water devastation of his hindbrain. There’s only good, please, yes.  

And Chan seems to get it. He fucks into him slowly, constant, moans Jeongin’s name into his own mouth. Jeongin moves his hips, grinds himself down on Chan’s cock. He puts his hands on Chan’s shoulders, hooks his fingers together behind Chan’s neck and holds them there, keeps his face as close to Jeongin’s as possible. Every breath Chan takes billows across Jeongin’s cheeks; his exhales hot against Jeongin’s lips. He wonders if Chan would spit in his mouth if he asked, but – now doesn’t seem the time.

“Have you – fucked any of the others?” Jeongin does ask, when one of Chan’s thrusts grinds his cock up against Jeongin’s prostate. Chan registers the angle, and adjusts, so every movement meets it. “Like this?”

Jeongin watches Chan’s eyes flutter shut, eyelashes soft and thick and casting shadows down his cheeks. “Mmm. You really want to know?” And he punctuates it with another slow grind of his hips, pulling out and thrusting back in slow enough for Jeongin to feel every inch of drag. 

“Yes, hyung,” Jeongin says, even though his voice breaks when Chan’s cock moves against his prostate again. He does want to know, feels like he’s been thinking about this for… for ever; Chan, with the other boys, with his boys. “I wanna know, I want to – to –”

“You wanna watch?” Chan finishes for him. He picks up pace a little, fucking into Jeongin a little faster, harder. “You want to watch me fuck them, too? Wanna see how good I can make them feel?”

Ah, shit. Jeongin gasps. He thinks, distantly, about Seungmin, sitting beside him in Felix’s bed. About Minho, keeping his gaze trained on the mirror. About Changbin, sat behind him, and Hyunjin, kneeling in front of him. “Yes, yes, I want that – fuck, Chan-hyung, fuck –”

“Who do you want to see first, hm?” Chan asks. His cock drags in and out of Jeongin steadily, pulling all the way out and then all the way back in. Jeongin feels like he’s going crazy. “You know we’d do anything for you, Ayennie. What do you want to see?”

The thing is that Jeongin has wanted all of it, for so long, that it feels impossible to narrow down. How do you begin to list something when you can’t even fathom the depth of it, can’t hold the breadth of it long enough in your mind to choose? But he can’t say that. Can’t say a whole lot of anything with the way Chan fucks so sweetly, gently, into him where he hasn’t been touched in – so long. Embarrassingly long. He clutches at Chan’s body with clumsy hands, says, “Anyone. All of them. Or just you. Whatever you want.”

“I asked what you want, honey,” Chan says, but his rhythm – falters at that, his hips stuttering against Jeongin’s in a break from that insistent, steady grind of his cock into Jeongin’s body.

That’s the thing. “All of it,” Jeongin says. He means it in a way that’s torn from his chest: it feels like a cop-out, but any other answer would be a lie. “All of it. I always have.”

Chan makes a little choked sound, his body coming down in a curve like the elegant arch of a bow as he presses his forehead to Jeongin’s again. “Even your Chan-hyung?” he breathes. It sounds like he’s trying to be cheeky. It also sounds, in that raw-edged blunt-bruise way, like he means it a little too much.

“Always you,” Jeongin says, wonders how no one has told Chan this before. Wonders what it will take for him to believe it. He fists his hands in the hair at the back of Chan’s head, drags their mouths together and kisses him, messy and wet and barely a kiss at all – just a press of lips, and then an open-mouthed kiss, and Jeongin moans against Chan’s teeth. He holds Chan’s hair a little… too tight, maybe, enough that he can feel Chan’s resistance to it, but even more than that he can feel the way Chan shudders, the way something comes loose in his body about it. “Fuck, Chan-hyung,” Jeongin says, pressed into Chan’s lips, “fuck, I’ve always wanted you, of course I have.” 

Chan fucks into him, shudders, shivers where Jeongin’s hands pull at his hair. He moans, too, something low and deep in his throat. He pulls away from Jeongin’s lips, tipping his head to bury it in Jeongin’s shoulder, the tender skin beneath his jaw. He bites there, gentle, careful, mouthing at the skin pulled taut over Jeongin’s jugular. “God, Iyennie. You have no idea what you do to me.”

Probably the same as Chan does to Jeongin, he wants to say. But then Chan’s teeth close over the skin a little harder, sucking at it lightly. Enough that there’ll be a mark, Jeongin thinks, and it’s not like Chan to flout his own rules like that. Jeongin can’t bring himself to stop him, though. Something sparks through him – that Chan wants that badly, makes Jeongin wonder what the other members will say about it. What Minho will say.

What a heady fucking thing, to be wanted with such fervour he’s broken Chan out of the rules he sets for himself. Jeongin clenches experimentally down against where Chan is buried inside him, feels the way Chan’s groan shudders against his throat, trembles himself at the way it drives Chan’s cock impossibly – deeper, closer. Here is something Jeongin and Chan have always had in common: they like to operate the same way they’ve always set their mind to doing. They make decisions and stick to them. Chan, Jeongin knows, must have sat down and weighed up whether it was worth the risk of leaving any marks at all; at some point, maybe years ago now, he had decided that they were fine if they were hidden. Now, Chan is so out of his own head, caught instead in the joining of his body and Jeongin’s, that he does not care. That he did not think. The thrill of it, the impossible intimacy of it, makes Jeongin’s head spin.

Chan’s fingers work against Jeongin’s hips, pressing some sort of interminable pattern or rhythm into his skin – grounding, reassuring. He fucks Jeongin like it’s easy to weigh up and understand how Jeongin wants it, like he can taste the pleasure that blooms through Jeongin’s body the moment he does something right. The gentle rhythm of it is devastating. 

Jeongin likes getting fucked. Not a whole lot of people have ever made love to him. 

He can feel the pleasure building in his stomach, something slow and hot like magma, running all through his veins. His orgasm building, not quite at its peak. He hasn’t come untouched like this before, doesn’t quite think he can. But Chan is still fucking him, so Jeongin grinds his hips down on Chan’s dick, meets each of his thrusts as steadily as he can, even when his abs start to ache with it.

“You feel so good,” he manages to gasp out, when Chan’s teeth scrape against the side of his neck again, and his cock pounds into Jeongin’s prostate with each movement. His dick drags in and out of Jeongin’s body, hot and heavy, and pleasure spills across Jeongin’s body everywhere. A slow-moving river, almost, winding around him. He loses himself in the current.

“God,” Chan echoes. His voice cracks, his veneer breaking down. “God, baby, you too – you feel like you were made for this, made for us –”

If Chan keeps talking about the others, Jeongin thinks he might die. If he closes his eyes, he can imagine they’re here, their eyes on him, so different to anybody else’s. For now, he looks at Chan’s, at the molten dark of his irises and the fan of lashes, batting at him. Jeongin – had wanted to get railed. Had looked at Chan, the breadth of his body and the heavy shape of his soft cock and the lazy self-assurance that only slipped through the insecurity on good days, and thought, bend me over, break me – but, Jeongin thinks, tugging Chan as flush to him as he can, undone by the way Chan fucks him, intent and wrought through with desperation but fundamentally gentle – this is good. This might be better. It’s just hard on his heart.

And it doesn’t need to be. “Hyung,” Jeongin says, then whines as Chan shifts inside him, sending pleasure knifing up his spine and radiating outwards from there. There is intimacy all around him: Chan’s breath smells like the energy drinks he keeps in the studio, and each time he fucks into Jeongin the skin of his balls is just slick enough with sweat that they make a wet little noise as Chan pulls away again, and Jeongin’s fingers work over the little patch of acne scars that sits right above the swell of Chan’s ass. He’s so fucking human. He’s so fucking beautiful. “Love you,” Jeongin says, and he feels it sit high and perfect in his chest, and Chan looks at him like he’s never heard anyone say it before.

(Which is, of course, total bullshit. Felix alone says it enough for the eight of them. Maybe what Jeongin means is that Chan looks at him when he says love you like it’s special, like it’s stunned him, like it matters.

Jeongin’s heart swells river-wide in his chest.)

Chan gasps, moans, something pulled from his lungs. “I – God, I’m close, Innie, I’m so –”

Yeah, Jeongin thinks. He is too, something beginning to crest, the peak, the heat in his stomach starting to boil. Pleasure rises, so much of it he isn’t entirely sure how he’s still conscious. “Me too, hyung,” he manages to say, tongue feeling too big in his mouth, “make me come? Make me come, hyung, please – make me –”

“I know, I know,” Chan is saying, chanting, fucking into him desperately now. “I’ll make you come, baby, Jeonginnie, I will –”

Jeongin’s orgasm rises and rises and rises. He digs his nails into Chan’s back, probably hard enough to leave telltale marks. Hard enough that it must hurt him. Chan moves one of his hands to Jeongin’s cock, starts stroking up and down it in time with his thrusts. Jeongin has had good sex, great sex, before, but nothing quite compares to this. Right now. “Hyung, I – I – fuck , hyung, fuck, I – I love you, feels so good, Channie – Channie-hyung, please –”

“Yeah,” Chan says low and throaty. He thumbs over the head of Jeongin’s dick, rolls his hips. Like he needs it. Like he means it. “Come on, baby, whenever you need – so fucking pretty –” His voice has parted around something ragged, like the rapids of a river over stone, hasn’t been the same since Jeongin said love you, and Jeongin fumbles for his shoulderblades and tugs Chan as close as he can. “There you are, fucking perfect,” Chan breathes, air rasping over Jeongin’s ear, and Jeongin feels his hips buck as he comes: immediate, overwhelming, sweet. On Chan’s cock. Chan murmuring in his ear.

Fucking perfect. Jeongin makes a noise embarrassingly like a sob; he clenches again down on Chan inside him, then jolts when it drags Chan’s cock against his prostate again, presses his lips into Chan’s throat and shakes and shakes and shakes. “Hyung,” he says. Chan’s movements are stuttering now, uncoordinated, and Jeongin needs it, needs him, has a brief embarrassing moment of clarity as he realises a condom didn’t even occur to him. Whoops. He cannot quite bring himself to feel upset over the raw drag of Chan’s cock against him, pleads “Hyung, come on, give it to me,” wants to feel it. He reaches down to where Chan’s hand is wearing his come, echoed arousal lancing through him at the sight, and tugs it gently away from his spent cock to interlace their fingers.

“Fuck,” Chan exhales heavily, thrusts into Jeongin one last time, grips his hand tightly, so tight Jeongin’s fingers go a little numb. He feels Chan’s cock twitching inside him, pulsing through his orgasm, and Chan’s thighs shaking against his. Jeongin can barely hear Chan’s moans through the blood rushing in his own ears, the static at the edge of his vision. Chan finishes inside him, cock warm and heavy, and then he pulls out slowly. Jeongin feels the slow drip of come leaking out of him, and feels his entire body shiver. Chan sits back on his knees, uses his hands to keep Jeongin’s legs spread to stare at him.

“Ah, hyung –”

“I’m not allowed to look?” Chan asks. His voice is remarkably steady for a guy who just orgasmed, Jeongin thinks. He feels like he just got hit by a truck, and then reversed over by it. 

“ No, ” Jeongin says, mortified, then makes the conscious effort to relax into the pressure of Chan’s palms so that his legs loll open wider. “You’re all freaks.”

“Jeonginnie,” Chan says, fond twofold, somewhere between the easy giggly way he usually tells Jeongin our maknae is so cute and that husky, desperate tone he’d used when he’d said baby and fuck and please – all of it folded into Jeongin’s name together. Chan lifts a lube-sticky hand to trace over Jeongin’s stomach, oddly transfixed, then laughs when Jeongin leaves his leg where Chan had put it. “You want another?”

Jeongin does consider it. His dick – valiantly – insists that he could. But the gnawing in his chest has been patient for so long, the slow steady erosion of misgivings into silt, and Jeongin mumbles, “Nah, can we. Can we cuddle? Instead?”, his voice wavering a little. 

Chan’s face softens. Not just his face: his entire body seems to melt at Jeongin’s words. He crawls back up the bed, situating himself next to Jeongin, wrapping both his arms tightly around him. He does aegyo, too, cute enough that Jeongin can’t even bring himself to tell Chan to stop: “aigoo, of course we can. Our maknae just wants to cuddle?”

“Okay, nevermind,” he does say, making absolutely no effort to remove himself from Chan’s arms. He can feel Chan’s come slowly drying between his thighs, tacky and cold, and Chan’s hand is still kind of – damp, with lube. They’ll clean up soon. As soon as Jeongin’s legs start working again. Or when he can bear to be away from Chan for more than a second, he’ll make Chan get up to find a washcloth. 

But not yet. For now, he relaxes in Chan’s hold, relishes the gentle ache in his body, the bone deep satisfaction. Anything else – everything else – can be worried about later.

(The longest river in Korea winds its way through the country until it comes to Busan, sprawling hundreds of metres wide at its mouth. Jeongin hadn’t really liked the port as a kid. But he had looked at it once, thought, All this way and no one really notices how far it’s come. Cranes in its shallows. The fens and marshes it had known. The mountains of its genesis, and the way it had always tumbled down to the sea.

The estuary sits broad and sweet and brackish in Jeongin’s chest until he makes Chan get up and shower with him. Then he isn’t thinking about rivers any more. Only water, and bodies, and closeness.

He has a tendency to shy from the word love. But it doesn’t make him as afraid as it used to.)

“Look who it is,” Minho says when Jeongin lets himself and Chan into the apartment. There’s a moment where Jisung and Felix – both already flushed and clearly tipsy – glance over to the entryway and make near-identical expressions that are something along the lines of a deer horny for the headlights, and then Chan makes a sad little noise like a balloon deflating. Jeongin decides to take pity on him.

“Your coworkers are here,” he says, toeing off his shoes. In the direction of the rest of the apartment, aiming for unaffected but still a little giddy, he calls, “Seungmin, everyone owes you thirty thousand won.”

Jeongin doesn’t have to look at Chan to know the face he’s making – something cute and blushy and a little bit like did you have to say it like that. But it’s very quickly overwhelmed by the clamour that arises in the living room. Seungmin, shouting, “I knew it!” and everyone else beginning to complain.

“Are you serious?” Felix says, eyes bright, grinning. “Nice one, Chan-hyung!”

Chan makes another deflated noise. Like he’d rather be anywhere but here. Jeongin just laughs. He leans in close to Chan, too, knocking their shoulders together. From there, it’s easy to kiss him as well, a gentle press of lips, something small and soft. It doesn’t take all the tension out of Chan’s shoulders, but it siphons a little bit of it out.

Until someone wolf whistles – Jisung, probably, already a few drinks deep, inhibitions lowered. Chan peers around Jeongin to glare at him, though it does very little to discourage him. When Jisung stops whistling, Minho raises a very targeted eyebrow.

“So? Do we get the details?” Minho asks, watching the way Chan is orbiting Jeongin’s every movement. Jeongin walks them into the main room, Chan stuck close to him, and settles them on the couch nearest the door. Once sat, Chan seems to relax into the pressure of Jeongin’s body a little more, pressed together.

“Absolutely not,” Jeongin says, a full three beats too late, distracted by the closeness. Chan’s hand settles on the smallest part of his waist like he doesn’t even know he’s doing it. Jeongin swallows, then flushes as he sees the way Minho’s eyes track each detail – but it doesn’t taste like fear, this thing that lines his throat now. Eyes, cameras, have always meant there is somebody else Jeongin needs to be. But not here. Never with these men; never with those boys they’d been. Warmth boils through Jeongin’s body. Want translates so easily into have now; he cups Chan’s chin in one hand, Chan’s smile the mirror to his own, and leans in to kiss him for just a moment. Then a moment turns into another. Then the next moment lingers.

In his periphery, Changbin emerges from the kitchen with a beer and does a little double-take, then is immediately upstaged by Hyunjin following him two seconds later and dropping a plate on the floor with a strangled shriek. 

“ Seungmin won the bet?!”

Someone laughs; Chan buries his face in Jeongin’s shoulder, breath warm against his neck. Seungmin’s own voice rises in protest, and Jisung’s, and Felix’s joining in. The clatter of china as Changbin starts clearing the plate Hyunjin had broken. Jeongin just looks at Minho, something dark, understated, in his eyes. Like he’s asking, okay?

Yeah, Jeongin thinks. Yeah. Okay.

ADULTS ONLY 🔞🔞🔞‼️

04.43 am [ channie hyung ] added [ Yang Jeongin ] to [ ADULTS ONLY 🔞🔞🔞‼️ ]

08.48 am [ seungmong ] yeah, yeah

08.48 am [ seungmong ] View my KakaoPay QR code to make payments online! https://…

08.48 am [ seungmong ] three of you still owe me money