Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

Jeongin didn’t care that all his bandmates were fucking each other. He really didn't. Sure, he didn't think it was the most conventional relationship to have with his coworkers, but then Stray Kids veered harshly away from conventionality at the best of times. There were enough fan compilations of Minho slapping all their asses and Jisung making heart eyes in the background of all their SKZ-Talker videos to where he was sure even the fans wouldn't be too surprised if it was leaked that people in the band were passing each other around. It had always been a half-joke in their group, of them fucking each other. We’re all young men, and we’re all hot, Jisung would say. It’s only natural we’d be attracted to each other. Jeongin had never found it funny. And ever since Jisung started swallowing Minho’s cum every other night, he hadn’t uttered any more philosophies on the topic.

Jeongin didn't know when it started. Honestly, he didn't think they could tell him when it started. It was difficult to determine when no one was actually talking about what they were doing. Many of these encounters took place in empty practice rooms, dark hallways, nightclubs, basically anywhere out of view. Or, more specifically, out of Jeongin’s view, because Jeongin was not a participant in their non-ethical nonmonogamy. It’s not that he didn’t want to be involved, because he did. Sometimes, Jeongin wanted to throw a fit about being excluded, but he couldn’t because that would require talking about it, which was something no one was doing. It’s clear how this loop quickly became recursive.

It would be fine if Jeongin could also not talk about it, could let himself be pulled away or shoved against a wall and just indulge in what he was allowed, but he couldn’t. He didn’t want his members in the same way they wanted him. He craved intimacy, yes, he craved the softness and the nagging and the fixation of their attention. He craved the way they gravitated toward each other, magnetized, the way they were all combining into one many-headed being, skin always in contact with someone else’s skin. He craved the long looks and forehead kisses they teased each other with, so fleeting, sweeter for the way they were secret. He wanted to be at the center of their universe so badly that his chest ached sometimes, like his heart would give out with the force of all his longing.

He didn’t want sex, though. And for the others, that kind of intimacy- the affection and attention and longing- came hand-packaged along with sex. So, regretfully, Jeongin forced himself to abstain. He pretended he didn’t see their lustful gazes, that he was oblivious to their invitations. He knew rejecting them would tear him apart from the inside out, so he made sure he’d never be in the position where he’d have to say the words out loud. It wasn’t anyone’s fault, this situation. Sometimes you just couldn’t have everything you wanted. Jeongin knew this, and even though it made him sick with envy, he accepted it.

The thing about his groupmates, though, is that they didn’t seem to know what they wanted. Although they managed to stay professional at work and keep their camera personas up, in their private life, the groups’ dynamics had atrophied into disarray. Every conversation was a minefield. Jeongin pretending not to know meant that the others by extension never told him what was going on, but then again, they weren’t really telling each other either. There was often very little talking going on at all. In the car, in the airport, sitting next to each other on planes, the silence was ear-splitting. Even in the beginning, when they were all stressed out teenagers who despised each other, the vibes had never been so wretched.

Something shifted for good when the Changbin-Hyunjin-Felix triangle destabilized. Jeongin didn’t try to notice, but it was hard not to, when Changbin was suddenly avoiding Hyunjin like the plague. One day after a long day of schedules, they were dropped off at their dorm and Hyunjin was the last to climb out of the car. This was strange. Normally, Changbin or Jisung would pull Hyunjin out of the car and bully him up to his room, nagging and bothering him even as they let Hyunjin rest his body weight on them. Not so, now. Today, it was Felix who Changbin pulled out of the car, and Jisung was busy hanging on Chan as he talked to the driver, sorting out tomorrow’s timetable. When Hyunjin climbed out of the backset, he looked unusually keyed up considering the late hour. The sun was setting, and they’d all been up before dawn for a morning broadcast, something Hyunjin deeply hated. You couldn’t tell it though, from how awake he looked then.

When they got upstairs, Seungmin unlocked the door and left it open for Minho to follow close behind. Chan and Jisung dipped into their own dorm, but Changbin didn’t follow. He went across the hall with Felix, not sparing a second glance at Hyunjin. Hyunjin stood in the middle of the hallway, looking pained, and Felix only threw an apologetic glance back at him before he allowed Changbin to lead him into his own dorm, and Hyunjin was left alone. Well, not alone, because Jeongin was there, but Jeongin wasn’t really any help in this situation, was he?

“Is everything alright?” He asked anyway but was not surprised when Hyunjin just flashed him a tight smile.

“Everything’s fine, Innie. Just a long day.”

Jeongin ran through his memories, trying to find instances of tension between Changbin and Hyunjin, but it was getting so hard to keep track of who was beefing with who and what arguments had and hadn’t been resolved. Jeongin thought that if they weren’t contractually obligated to stay together their friend group may have dissolved by now.

As it was, he came up empty, and so he had nothing to refute Hyunjin’s statement with.

“Yeah, I guess it was,” was all he said. “Rest well, hyung.”

Hyunjin said something noncommittal in response, and dipped into his dorm, closing the door behind him.

That instance didn’t leave Jeongin, though. He started paying more attention to Changbin, Hyunjin, and Felix, the way they moved around each other and related to each other. It became apparent that Changbin was avoiding Hyunjin, but the reason why wasn’t clear. It just seemed like he would rather not be places where Hyunjin was. When Hyunjin and Felix were together, Changbin would speak only to Felix, then walk away without acknowledging Hyunjin sitting right there. In some ways, it seemed that Felix was the mouthpiece between Changbin and Hyunjin, carrying messages back and forth, a bridge across the Sienne.

Jeongin asked Seungmin about it, but Seungmin didn’t know either. He too was uninvolved in the Machiavellian relationship dynamics of the other six members, but Jeongin was unsure why. It could be the same problem as himself, or maybe Seungmin just had the self-control of ten men and decided it would be too messy for him to be involved. He always was the most career-focused of their group. Maybe he wasn’t even attracted to them and found their lovesickness to be inconvenient and irksome. Maybe he was even straight.

Wouldn’t that be hilarious.

Whatever the reason, Seungmin was also uninvolved, and he also wasn’t nosey like Jeongin was, so he kept even fewer tabs on the antics of their members than Jeongin did.

“Changbin and Hyunjin are always on and off,” he said. “I think it’ll be fine. Felix won’t let them keep the whole silent treatment up for long.”

This was true; Felix is the best at conflict resolution out of the eight of them. The problem was that conflict resolution when it’s not your conflict is treacherous waters. Jeongin worried about Felix getting sucked into a problem that isn’t his and making it worse. Then again, Jeongin isn’t sure how this could not be about Felix in some way. He also isn’t sure if it’s possible to make it any worse.

“I just worry,” Jeongin admitted. “This has been going on for weeks now.”

Seungmin sighed. “I know. But there isn’t anything we can do, so we just have to trust them to sort it out. We’ve come out of every other fight we’ve had as a stronger group. This will be the same.”

It wasn’t, though. Jeongin just knew that it wasn’t.

Despite the Lifetime Original Movie going on in the background, life continued. Just because Jeongin wasn’t fucking his bandmates, didn’t mean that he didn’t still enjoy spending time with them. Being a middle child who had limpets for siblings, he wasn’t used to being left to his own devices for too long, and he still sought out his hyungs just to have a warm body in the same vicinity as him. It had been that way even before he realized he was in love with his members, and the urge to be around them had only gotten worse since, despite Jeongin’s staunch attempts to tamper the feeling down. He understood they had a lot going on, and he didn’t want to make it about himself, but as the weeks wore on, he felt more and more like collateral damage each day. The tension between all the older members meant he was often deprioritized, or told it isn’t a good time, and he got it, he really did. Far be it from him to deny someone space to process their feelings. It only hurt if he thought about it too much, so he didn’t. He called one of his other friends, or his brothers, or he hung out with Seungmin, who never minded Jeongin’s presence even when they just sat and did nothing. Even when Seungmin was upset at him, it was rare that Jeongin was banned from his vicinity entirely. They online shopped together, and DoorDashed way too much food from restaurants that were definitely ghost kitchens, and Jeongin told Seungmin all the gossip he’d heard from his other idol friends and Seungmin would cover his mouth, scandalized, and it made Jeongin laugh every time. Seungmin was a constant where the others were a fragile, unpredictable tumult.

Sometimes, though, the stars aligned, and the clouds parted, and his hyungs actually had the energy to tolerate Jeongin’s presence. It was a rare (and getting rarer) occurrence, but it did happen, which is why Jeongin kept trying. When he got bored one day when they had a free afternoon and knocked on Hyunjin’s door, he didn’t hesitate at the voice telling him to come in, and he returned Hyunjin’s smile with one so wide and genuine that Jeongin feared it would give him away.

It didn’t take long for Jeongin to find himself laying on Hyunjin's bed, playing Donut County on Felix's Switch. He wasn't much of a gamer, but Donut County was simple and mind-numbing, and the music wasn't too annoying, so it was an easy way to turn his brain off. Hyunjin was on the bed next to him, switching between watching Jeongin and scrolling aimlessly through his phone. They were pressed up against each other; Jeongin could feel Hyunjin's body shift slightly with each breath.

Hyunjin's phone buzzed, and a banner popped up. Jeongin couldn't see the contact name from where he was sitting, but from the way Hyunjin's face crumpled in irritation, and the sudden acrid state of the air in the dorm, he was almost certain it was from or about Changbin. Hyunjin opened the message and tapped something out. A few moments later, there was another buzz. The temperature in the room dropped ten degrees.

"Everything alright?" Jeongin asked.

"Yeah," said Hyunjin in the most not-alright tone Jeongin had ever heard.

"Are you sure?"

"Don't worry about it. It's not a big deal."

Jeongin looked over at Hyunjin, who was stubbornly not looking at Jeongin or his phone. His jaw was set, his muscles tense.

"You know you can tell me anything, right?"

Hyunjin's eyes darted towards him before going back to the ceiling. "I know."

Well, what else could Jeongin do to diffuse? "Okay," he said, and turned back to his game.

He managed to finish two more levels in silence. Hyunjin was so still for so long that Jeongin began to think he might've fallen asleep, when Hyunjin spoke.

"I’m afraid that I take things too personally. I’m too intense. Do you think that’s true?"

Jeongin exited to menu and put the Switch down, turning on his side to face Hyunjin. "I don't think so."

"I’ve been arguing with Changbin-hyung a bit lately," he confessed, as if it was possible for Jeongin to not have noticed. "I can't say about what, but we're not on the same page. He says I’m 'making something out of nothing'."

"You and he process things differently. Just because he doesn't get why you're upset doesn't mean it's irrational."

"I just don't know what he wants. I keep trying to sort things out, but he doesn't want to listen, and he's normally so mature about this kind of thing so I don't get why it's different now."

Jeongin bit his lip. He didn't know the exact fight Hyunjin was referring to, but he could take a pretty good guess at the overarching issue. Maybe Hyunjin was trying to have a conversation about it, but Changbin was refusing? Which would be consistent with what had been happening for the past two months. Still, Jeongin really didn't know what he was supposed to say now, tangled up in extant and forbidden knowledge.

"I’m sorry," he finally settled on. "I know you don't like it when things drag on like this."

Hyunjin sighed. "Yeah. It just sucks. We're trying to be normal but there's this tension. Every time I look at him, I get emotional."

"Could you ask someone to mediate?"

"I tried. That just seems to make it worse.”

Jeongin hummed in acknowledgement. Hyunjin's eyes finally swiveled over to him.

"I’m sorry I’m being so vague. There's just a lot I’d have to explain, and I don't know where I’d start."

"You don't have to tell me anything you don't want to."

"You deserve to know, though. It's just so big. This is what Changbin was talking about. I can't stop panicking about the future and just stay here in the present."

"I think that's just a matter of perspective. Some people like to know where things will end up and some people are fine with finding out as they go. Neither one is wrong, but they both conflict."

Hyunjin sighed. "You're so wise, Innie. Have you been looking through Seungmin's psychology books?"

Jeongin punched Hyunjin's arm lightly, getting a laugh out of him, and some of the anxiety in the air faded.

"So hostile! You're cruel to hit me when I’m down."

"Physical pain will distract you from your emotional pain," Jeongin said dryly, and Hyunjin laughed again.

"Minho-hyung is rubbing off on you. That's exactly the kind of thing he'd say."

Jeongin shrugged. "That's what happens when you live with someone, I guess."

"I’m so jealous sometimes. Your dorm seems much saner than ours."

"It is quiet until you come over. Then it's just as hectic as it is up here."

This time Hyunjin smacked Jeongin, voice high with rebuke, and Jeongin inhaled on a smile.

They lay in the pleasant, light air for a while, drinking in each other's presence.

"Thank you for coming over," Hyunjin said. "I miss spending time with you."

"You see me every day."

"You know what I mean."

And he did.

Jeongin sighed and picked the Switch up off his stomach again. "Whatever you need, hyung. And I’m sure Changbin-hyung will come around. He loves you too much to stay upset for long."

"You think so?" Hyunjin asked, and there was an odd tone to his voice, a note of insecurity that had Jeongin turning to face him again.

"Yes? Of course he loves you. He loves all of us."

"I guess so."

Jeongin shifted onto his elbow. "Are you sure this is just a small fight?" He was almost begging Hyunjin to just spit it out, to open the floodgates and put Jeongin out of his misery. He felt like he was living a double life, and the pieces of his personality were trying to merge into one diametric whole. Just tell me you're in love with him. We all know it. You know I know it.

Hyunjin worried his lips. "I just don't want to explain. I can't. I'm sorry."

Jeongin let out a long breath through his nose. "Okay."

"Don't be mad at me."

"I’m not mad. But don't say stupid things. Of course hyung loves you. We all love you, no matter if we're fighting or not."

Hyunjin's eyes met his, and his gaze was full of meaning when he responded, "And I love all of you."

This is the part where Jeongin is supposed to get up and leave.

He'd gotten pretty good at identifying the look in his hyung's eyes, when something he doesn't want to see is about to happen. It's easy to tell as an outside observer when two of his members are about to jump each other. None of them are subtle at all. This skill, of course, extended to Jeongin's own interactions, as minimal as they were. And normally he would excuse himself, or change the subject, or do anything to draw a line in the sand that it would be impossible for the other to cross. But here, laying face to face on Hyunjin's bed, with both of them being honest and vulnerable in a way they normally wouldn't risk, he knows he can't do that. It would hurt Hyunjin's feelings to shatter the atmosphere like this. It would feel like a rejection. Jeongin didn’t want that to happen. He couldn’t let it happen.

"Innie," Hyunjin said, and his voice was so, so quiet. "You've been so nice to me today."

"Have I?" he asked, but he was also whispering, the atmosphere around them as fragile as a butterfly wing.

"You’re so nice to me always, no matter what. And you've looked so cute sitting here playing your game."

"I’m always cute."

"I know. " Hyunjin's eyes darted down towards Jeongin's lips, then back up again, telegraphing his thoughts loud and clear. This was the part where he was supposed to stop, where he would sit up and grab his phone and go back downstairs-

"Innie, can I kiss you?"

But he's so tired of diametrics.

"Yes."

When Hyunjin kissed him, a warmth indescribable came over Jeongin, blooming from his chest all the way out to the furthest reaches of his veins. Hyunjin wasn’t aggressive or hasty. He only held Jeongin in place for a few seconds before backing away, letting out a shaky breath.

Jeongin's head whirred, a shaky mess of strong and violent emotions flooding through him. Hyunjin looked at him with caution, like he expected Jeongin to flee, but Jeongin found himself magnetically stuck in Hyunjin's pull. He couldn't even think about heading for the door.

"Was that okay?" Hyunjin checked, that element of stress seeping into his voice again.

"Yes," Jeongin said, shocked by how breathless he was.

"Can I... can we do that again?"

“Please."

Hyunjin was on him in an instant, connecting their lips together as he snuck an arm around Jeongin to pull him closer. Jeongin felt blasted by his body heat, losing track of his limbs as he tilted his head and fell into a cloud of Hyunjin Hyunjin Hyunjin, warm and alive under his own hands. Hyunjin swiped his tongue across Jeongin's lips, and he opened his mouth, pulling a satisfied sigh out of Hyunjin as their tongues brushed past, wet and electric. They broke apart to breathe, but Jeongin barely had a second to compose himself before they were back together again. Jeongin let the edges of himself get fuzzy, mind whiting out in a pleasant buzz of energy.

He didn't even notice that Hyunjin had turned him on his back until he felt the weight of him on his ribcage, their bodies flush together. Fingers tangled in Jeongin's hair. He'd lost track of his own hands at some point, thought they were clutching at Hyunjin's clothes somehow. The hand on Jeongin's back slid lower, dipping under Jeongin's sweater to slide along his bare skin, and Jeongin arched on instinct, gasping into Hyunjin's mouth as their hips ground together, and Jeongin could feel Hyunjin's hardening cock through both their sweatpants. Hyunjin moaned into Jeongin's mouth. The hand on his back curled, nails digging into flesh.

And at that moment, the illusion shattered. Gone was the pleasant haze of the closeness, the comfort of having Hyunjin near and moving above him. Now he just felt trapped, disoriented. It felt like falling harshly back into his body and not knowing what to do with it anymore. He froze under Hyunjin, forgetting how to breathe for a second, and then flattened his palms against his chest and pushed him gently away.

"Stop," he said, breathing heavy both from their kiss and from his oncoming anxiety attack. "Hyunjin, stop."

Hyunjin leaned away, looking down at Jeongin with blown wide pupils. Jeongin felt distinctly like fresh meat, like a small fawn in the sights of a coyote.

"Innie?" he said, confused. "You okay?"

No. No I’m not okay. Jeongin swallowed, hyperaware of the foreign wetness on his lips. "I need to stop."

Hyunjin's brows furrowed. "What?"

"I can't do this." Jeongin was edging towards real panic now, his anxiety multiplied by the lack of comprehension from Hyunjin. "Please get off me."

Hyunjin blinked, then pulled away from Jeongin, warm pressure disappearing as Hyunjin retracted his hands and slid to the side of the bed. Jeongin sat up himself, breaths still shaky. He wiped the spit off his lips, but the dirty feeling stayed. He wanted to wash his whole mouth out with soap. He wanted to put bleach everywhere Hyunjin had touched him.

"Did I hurt you?" Hyunjin asked, still confused. "Did I go too fast?"

Guilt came crashing down on Jeongin so hard that if he wasn't already panicking, he would be now. He hid his shaking hands by sitting on them, still trying to calm his spinning brain.

"No, you didn't," he assured him. "You didn't do anything wrong."

"Then why did you stop me?"

"I just got overwhelmed," Jeongin pushed out. It was a weak response, and he knew it. "It's too much."

Jeongin finally looked up at Hyunjin to find him scanning Jeongin's face like a surveyor, brows knit and lips downturned.

"You don't look okay," he said finally, voice subdued. "You look scared."

Jeongin's breath hitched. "I’m not scared of you."

"I pushed you, didn't I? You don't like me that way."

"No!" Everything was spiraling out of Jeongin's control. "You didn't make me do anything. I liked it all. I wanted to. I just can't-" He took a shaky breath in. "I can't do what you and our other members are doing. I don't want to be with you in that way."

Hyunjin just stared at him. And yes, Jeongin wasn't supposed to say that, and definitely wasn’t supposed to say it in that way, but he didn't know how to explain, how to make it make sense when he knew it didn't make sense, that he was being difficult over something that wasn't even a big deal-

"I’m so sorry," he said. "I’m sorry, hyung. I didn't mean to- to disappoint you. I didn't mean to react so harshly."

"I’m not disappointed, Innie," Hyunjin said, an obvious lie. "You can't control how you feel. And if...if this isn't what you want, then that's okay."

Jeongin was going to start crying. He was going to burst into tears and collapse to the ground and die right there on the carpet. Alarm bells were screaming in his head, but everything in his head was screaming, pulling at his nervous system in a desperate game of no please we have to stay, and we need to get away from here. He wanted Hyunjin to wrap him up and tell him that they were going to be fine, but Hyunjin wasn't even looking at him anyway, had his hands fixed on his bedspread, and oh god oh god oh god-

"I’m sorry," he said again. That's all he knew how to say. "I love you so much, but I can't-"

"Don’t say that," Hyunjin said sharply, stealing the breath from Jeongin's lungs. "Don't say you love me right now. Just...don't."

"Okay." Jeongin had never heard his own voice so small.

They sat in silence for a moment, sitting across from each other. Hyunjin still wasn't looking at him. Jeongin had never felt more monstrous in his whole life.

"Do you want me to go?" he asked.

"I think so," Hyunjin said. "I need...a minute. I'll come find you."

Jeongin's heart crumbled into dust.

"Okay." It was barely a breath. Still feeling like a newborn fawn, Jeongin forcefully reminded his limbs how to move, sliding to the end of the bed and standing on two wobbly feet. His head was rapidly filling with static, and he almost forgot to grab his phone and the Switch, still stuck on the pulsing menu for chapter six of Donut County.

He walked towards the door without looking back, shutting it behind him.

From there, everything was a mess of panic and swirling thoughts. Somehow, he made it to the elevator and got back to his own dorm in one piece, and before he really knew what was happening, he was curled up on his own bed, knees drawn to his chest, struggling to breathe but not wanting to give up the safety of being small. He'd imagined this exact thing happening, had endured nightmares about it, had done worksheets and thought exercises, and convinced himself that it wasn't going to be so horrible, the rejection. That he'd be able to move past it. But the sheer weight of the anguish pressing down on him was almost physical, just as physical as Hyunjin's body had been, and Jeongin didn't know how he'd ever move past it. He felt dirty, and evil, and fundamentally unlovable. He'd led Hyunjin on and now he'd ruined what they had, ruined everything.

He didn't know how long it took him to stop shaking, but by the time he settled his whole body ached from the unreleased muscle tension. He still felt like he wanted to dip in bleach. A shower would have to do, though.

Jeongin moved into his and Felix's shared bathroom and stripped. His eyes caught his reflection in the mirror, and he saw his own swollen lips and eyes and almost sent himself spiraling again. He turned the water to the hottest setting it could go and stepped into the spray, letting the pain of the scalding water keep him present, and wash away all the traces of Hyunjin on him. He searched through all their soap bottles to find one of his own to use. He couldn't stand to take one of Felix's. He didn't want to smell like anyone else. He only stepped out when the water started to go cold, and even though the stickiness on his skin was gone he still felt unclean, somewhere deeper where water couldn't penetrate. Tears welled in his eyes again. He didn't want to associate this feeling with Hyunjin. It wasn't Hyunjin's fault that Jeongin was fucked in the head. It wasn't Hyunjin's fault that Jeongin wasn't enough for him.

He dragged on the first pair of sweats he found and resumed his place in the corner of the wall, hands over his ears as if that would block out the noise inside his own head, and prayed for sleep to take him, just so he wouldn't have to be in his own body for a while.

One consequence of idol life, for better or for worse, is the ability to compartmentalize. The next day they had schedules, and Hyunjin greeted Jeongin and his dormmates with a smile as they waited for the car to pull up outside. Jeongin smiled back, and they managed to get through the whole day pretending that the previous afternoon had never happened, and that everything was fine. Changbin and Hyunjin acted as obsessed with each other as always, playing up Changbin’s and Hyunjin’s fond annoyance for the cameras the way they knew STAY liked. And even though Jeongin knew they were all acting, he allowed himself to sit in the fantasy of everything being fine and normal. Hyunjin and Changbin weren’t having relationship issues. Jeongin and Hyunjin weren’t having friendship issues. Nobody was fucking anybody else, and they were all very close friends and coworkers with normal boundaries for their extremely platonic bonds. Of course, that wasn’t what was happening, but Jeongin could pretend sometimes, in the car or the JYPE building, and it kept him going, kept him grounded. Hyunjin didn’t hate him, of course not. He would never (and especially not where others could see).

But compartments do rupture from time to time.

He must’ve been having a bad day, or else gave off some silent distress signal that only Seungmin could hear, because about a week after his and Hyunjin’s kiss, Seungmin corralled Jeongin into his room saying he needed a partner to watch a new drama with because it was too cringey to watch alone. He and Seungmin were always watching dramas, sometimes because they were genuinely cute, sometimes ironically, and sometimes just for something to make fun of. This one seemed to be a pure hate watch, and they kept up a running commentary of the cliché male lead and the half-assed set for the main characters’ family convenience store, in which the cans on the shelves were not labeled and there appears to be no freezers in the entire establishment. Normalcy settled Jeongin’s nerves, a distraction from the interpersonal hell that existed beyond Seungmin’s closed door.

When the “Are you still watching?” notification popped up, Jeongin excused himself to go pee and grab a glass of water, and walked right into Hyunjin, Felix, and Minho in the kitchen, whispering fervently between themselves. They stopped speaking the moment Jeongin walked in, with Felix giving a nearly deer-in-the-headlights stare as Jeongin froze in the entryway. They couldn’t look more suspicious if they tried. Hyunjin looked up to see who entered the communal space, but his face tightened when he saw Jeongin, and Jeongin’s heart tightened in turn. He felt like an intruder in his own fucking home.

“Innie,” Minho says. He was he only one of the three who had consistently feigned normalcy even behind closed doors. “You startled us. We didn’t know you were home.”

“I’m just watching TV with Seungmin,” he said, unsure why it sounds so much like an apology. He forced himself to keep moving, getting two cups from the cupboard and filling them up at the sink with slow, measured movements, as if trying not to spook a herd of animals.

“Ah well, tell him hello for us,” Minho said. Jeongin nodded his assent with a smile of his own, grabbed his glasses of water and exited the kitchen as quickly but as casually as he could.

When he reappeared in Seungmin’s room, Seungmin immediately noticed the return of tension in his frame.

“What happened?” he asked, sitting up from where he’d been sprawled on the bed.

Jeongin set his water down on the desk, untouched, and hands the other glass to Seungmin.

“Nothing. I got caught up talking to some of the others in the kitchen.”

 “Was Hyunjin there?”

Jeongin wanted to be surprised that Seungmin had figured out the issue, but really, he expected nothing different. Seungmin had always been able to read him like a book. Or rather, more like a giant bold-font billboard. It seemed Seungmin knew everything about Jeongin, whether he wanted to or not.

“He was,” he admitted. “Not that it matters. He didn’t speak to me.”

“Did something happen between you two?” Seungmin asked. Jeongin had no idea in what sense Seungmin was referencing, so he decided to cover all his bases.

“Nothing like what’s happening with the others,” he explained. “It wasn’t a big deal. But since there’s been so much going on we haven’t gotten the chance to talk it out.”

“He’s been avoiding you pretty hard.”

“He’s been avoiding everyone.”

“Everyone is avoiding everyone. And somehow that includes us, even though we didn’t do anything.” Seungmin crosses his legs and sighs, perturbed. “I know it’s selfish but I just wish they could sort it out so things can go back to normal. I haven’t spoken to Hyunjin myself in over a week barring what’s necessary for work. Minho is next door to me, but he won’t meet my eyes, and I don’t think it’s part of our bit anymore.”

“I know,” Jeongin said, chest pulling with how horrible it was. “Felix and I haven’t had a meal together in weeks. He’s always with Changbin.”

“Jisung is always with Chan. And even when they’re with me, they’re not really there. They stop talking when I walk in the room, and I have to start the conversation again.”

“Yeah…That’s what happened to me just now.”

“It’s insulting,” Seungmin said, bitterness creeping into his tone. “This is all so dumb. But who am I to say what they should do, I guess. It’s not my mess.”

This conversation, too, was oddly charged. Yes, Jeongin and Seungmin pretended not to know about the others’ relationship problems, but maybe just as a matter of circumstance, they’d never discussed them between themselves either. It had felt too much like cruel gossip and wasn’t very fun to think about when the reality of it surrounded them every day. But now that they were talking about it, Jeongin found himself blurting out the question he’d been harboring for weeks now.

"Why don't you have sex with the others?"

Seungmin jolted. “What?”

“It’s only the six of them. Not you, not me. I’ve been wondering for ages why you don’t participate.”

Seungmin shrugged. "Why don't you?"

Jeongin rolled his eyes. "I asked first."

“Aish, Innie." Seungmin rolled his shoulders and set his water glass down on his bedside table. “It’s complicated. This isn't a normal situation."

"Really? I thought everyone's friend group had orgies on a regular basis."

Seungmin gave him a dirty look, and Jeongin shrugged. He lay down next to Seungmin on the bed, body curled towards the elder but not touching him, playing with Seungmin's hoodie strings. It was a long silence, but not uncomfortable.  Both of them were simply thinking their own thoughts.

Finally, Seungmin spoke. "I'm aromantic." He said it in English, foreign letters pitching his voice up. "I don't know how to say it in Korean. I read it on an American website."

The word was familiar, but Jeongin couldn't call the definition to mind. Something he'd seen in passing, maybe, while he was far down his own gender studies rabbit hole. "I don't know what that means," Jeongin admitted. 

"It means I don't want to date people. I don't want to be in a romantic relationship, and I don't think I ever will. I don't even really know what wanting that would feel like." 

Jeongin stayed silent, turning it over in his head. His first instinct was to brush it off, to say of course he didn't think about it, because they're twenty-one and insanely busy and it's a fantasy, the idea of dating anyone seriously right now. Jeongin wasn’t thinking about it either. But the way Seungmin was talking let him know it's more than that.

"I thought you had a crush on Minho," Jeongin said finally. “That’s why I was confused. You went from bugging him every day to not even looking at each other.”

Seungmin shook his head. "I thought I did too. But as time passes, the more I realize I don't want him like that. Hyungs, they look at each other and it's so..." he faltered. 

"It's disgusting."

Seungmin barked a laugh. "Yeah. Disgusting. That's how I feel about some of that stuff. I tolerate it, especially from Hyunjin and Chan and Jisung, because I know they love me. And I love them so much. I really do, I swear. It's just not the way they love me. And I know if we start sleeping together, they're going to want that kind of love from me. The disgusting kind. And I'll feel like I'm using them."

"Hyung, no one would ever think you were using them. They wouldn't get mad at you for something like that."

"Not to my face. But I know they'd be hurt by it. I think it's easier to accept I’m not interested in them at all."

"But you are?"

"I love them," Seungmin said again, as if that explained everything.

"But you don't want to date them."

"No."

‘Dating’ was a strong word to use for whatever the fuck was going on with his bandmates, but Jeongin knew in his heart it was the right one. The collective sensitivity, the possessiveness, the jealousy. They all lived in each other's skin, stumbling over themselves to take care of each other and give love and take love and swallow each other whole. It was a writhing animal of a relationship, tied down by the weight of too many unsaid conversations. 

Or at least, it was for the other six. Seungmin and Jeongin had opted out. 

"I'm asexual," Jeongin confessed. "That's why I don't sleep with them. I don't want to have sex at all. With anyone. I don’t like it and never have."

Seungmin stayed quiet, giving Jeongin time for his own confession. Jeongin's hands twisted in Seungmin's sweatshirt.

"Sometimes the hyungs...they look like they want to devour me. They try not to, but it's obvious. I get worried sometimes that if I’m alone with them, that things will progress to a point where I can't say no."

"None of us would ever do that to you." Seungmin's voice is sharp. "Don't even think it."

Jeongin let out a slow breath, feeling like he might explode. Seungmin’s eyes widened.

“Wait, did someone-”

“No, no,” Jeongin was quick to rebuff, taking Seungmin’s hand in his. “You’re right. No one would ever hurt me on purpose. But sometimes I don't even know it's too much until I’ve already done it, and I don't want to associate that bad feeling with them. So, like you said, it's better to pretend I don't want them at all."

It’s as close to rationalization as he can offer. Seungmin eyed him, as if discerning his truthfulness, but eventually Seungmin’s shoulders drop and he leans back, worries assuaged for the moment. It was so small, only half a gesture, really, before Jeongin cut him off, but it planted a seed of warmth in his chest, that Seungmin was so quick to defend him, to believe him. It’s a security that he didn’t know he was looking for until it was given.

"What a mess," Seungmin was saying, a dark amusement in his tone. "Combined we make one good boyfriend."

"It's more efficient that way."

Seungmin snorted and turned to his side to face Jeongin. They were face to face now, but still space between them. It was automatic for them. They knew exactly where each other’s personal space bubble stopped, just a few centimeters shy of their noses. Seungmin had never tried to touch him without Jeongin doing it first. And Jeongin didn't do favors for Seungmin without asking. A perfect balance, defined sharply by lack.

"What are we then?" Seungmin asked. "If I don't love you and you won't fuck me?"

"I don't know. Do we have to know?"

"No, I guess not. I don't think they know what they're doing either."

"But we can't do that. Whatever they're doing. It won't work."

"You think they can sort it out themselves?"

Jeongin huffed. "Not anytime soon. And I’m sure we'll be involved anyway, somehow or another."

Seungmin hummed, and some of the heavy tension fell away. Jeongin felt lighter, a bit. Like something knotted in his chest had finally come undone. 

"We'll be alright," Seungmin said, and Jeongin knew it was true. He closed his eyes, focusing on the warmth of Seungmin's body, the sound of their breathing in the quiet.

"Iyen-ah?"

"Mm."

"Do you like me?" 

Jeongin opened his eyes. Seungmin's gaze was as impassive as ever, but Jeongin knew the weight of the question, had felt his pulse jump in his wrist, so he gave it some thought. He compared his feelings for Seungmin to his feelings for Hyunjin, or Changbin, and tried to channel those disgusting emotions into their own bond. But it didn't work. The affectation slid off them like sludge.

"Do you want to fuck me?" he asked, as he was forming the words right in his mind.

"I asked first."

"I’m the youngest."

Seungmin stuck out his tongue, a gesture so juvenile Jeongin couldn't help but laugh. 

"No, I don't like you, hyung," he said when he'd calmed down. "I love you but not like that."

“Mm. Okay.”

“Well? Are you going to answer my question?”

“Does it matter? You don’t like sex, so I don’t want to ask you for it. How I feel isn’t important in this instance.”

“That’s…not how that works.”

“Do you want me to say yes so you can feel guilty about denying me? What would that fix?”

And, well. Put like that, it does sound like Jeongin is creating problems out of nothing.

“Okay,” he acquiesced. “Keep your secrets.”

“I will, thanks.”

Jeongin sighed. "Look at us. Uber-platonic. How dull."

"This is how bandmates are supposed to be, I think," Seungmin said drily. "Do you think Day6-sunbaenims were fucking in the studio at all hours of the day? It's weird group energy."

"Remind me how many members are left in Day6."

He expected the pillow to the face, was already laughing before it even landed, and he picked one up and retaliated, a warm comfort settling in his bones of security, of trust. No, they couldn't have the others, not like this. But it was easy to forget about it now.

Later that evening, the door to Seungmin's room creaked open, stirring Jeongin from sleep. It was much later, the room washed in shadows of the slowly fading sun. Jeongin could feel Seungmin breathing behind him, chest rising and falling with the even pattern of sleep. Footsteps walked in the room, only a few paces, before retreating.

"Let them be," was all Jeongin caught before the door was closed with a quiet click. Jeongin hummed, pulled the blanket higher around his shoulders, and closed his eyes again.

Hyunjin and Jeongin never really did “talk it out.” At some point, Hyunjin just…stopped ignoring him. His smiles became more genuine when he looked at Jeongin, and Jeongin no longer felt like he wasn’t allowed to be places that Hyunjin was. Jeongin, unwilling to prolong his own misery, allowed himself to be un-ignored. They didn’t spend more time together, though, because Hyunjin was busy spending time with other people, like Chan and Felix. Actually, all the members were busy spending time with each other, and by ‘each other’ he meant anyone in a five-mile radius who was not Jeongin and Seungmin. If it was rare to get time with his friends before, it was basically impossible now.

Seungmin was miffed about this, to say the least. He didn’t like being purposefully left out of things. Moreso, he didn’t like being treated like an idiot.

“They don’t want to talk to us because they don’t want to lie about everything,” Seungmin said at one point. “It bothers me because there is no reason to lie.”

Secretly, Jeongin also suspected Seungmin was hurt not only for being excluded, but for the implied lack of faith the others had in him. The members were hiding their problems from them both, whether out of shame or confusion or some kind of suicide pact they were all in on, but that begged the question of why Seungmin and Jeongin weren’t being viewed as people they could come to when they were struggling. Both of them were generally level-headed, and they’d all played therapist for each other before in a dozen different configurations. Seungmin gave good advice. He was straightforward and clear. Yet for the first time ever, no one wanted Seungmin’s advice. They didn’t think Seungmin would “get it”. And maybe it’s true that he wouldn’t have, but to be fair, that’s never stopped them before.

It was similar to the way Jeongin sometimes felt that their exclusion from the others’ antics, though a self-inflicted isolation, was also an insult in many ways. Because why didn’t the others show that they missed Jeongin’s presence the way he missed theirs? At least in the beginning, Jeongin had to put effort into dodging their advances. Since his and Hyunjin’s kiss, however, it was as if Jeongin was completely invisible.

“You know them,” Jeongin would placate. “They like to go through things alone. It just so happens that all six of them are going through something alone at the same time.”

“That’s the thing, though. They’re not going through it alone. They’re going through it together, without us.”

Jeongin tried not to think about it. He worried he was picking up bad habits from his hyungs, with all the not-thinking he was forced to do about this whole ordeal. But all Jeongin’s emotional intelligence couldn’t solve a problem that he wasn’t being allowed to work on, so he had to let it go. Seungmin and Jeongin would ask the others to eat meals with them, and when they were denied, they simply went on their own. They watched dramas on their own, they cleaned out Jeongin’s shoe collection on their own, they got on video call with Seungmin’s sister while everyone else was God-knows-where and when she asked where all his other members were and Seungmin shrugged and said they had better things to do, his sister responded “Well at least you have Jeongin-ah to keep you in line,” and Jeongin gave her thumbs up, which made her laugh and Seungmin huff, and brightened the afternoon well enough that the exhaustion that always enclosed them seemed to break momentarily.

Now that the embargo on the topic was broken, they talked about the others sometimes, but never too much. It was too painful to ruminate on. Jeongin was still too ashamed of his previous interaction with Hyunjin to allow himself to become entwined with them again. That day had firmly cemented Jeongin’s belief in their incompatibility, and Jeongin was determined to make steps towards ridding himself of a useless, loveless fantasy. Seungmin was equally hesitant to give any opinion on the topic other than his own impatience. In all honesty, they were being dragged down as well, bogged down by all the words unsaid.

Then it started to spill into work.

Now, Jeongin could handle a hostile home environment. He could handle being left on read and being brushed off in the hallways and the entire room going quiet when he walked in, as if he was an intruder and not their close friend. What he couldn’t handle was them not getting any fucking work done. Because before they were friends, or roommates, or brothers-in-arms, they were first and foremost coworkers, and their job happened to be pretty reliant on their group synergy and cooperation. As both of those qualities degraded, work became a trial. Filming felt like it dragged on forever. Arrangements for car rides were so complex that Jeongin swore he saw someone drag out a diagram in order to avoid bad blood in confined spaces. Where Chan’s studio used to be a welcoming, safe space, it now made Jeongin’s hair stand on end. He sounded worse in recordings. Horrendous working conditions all around. He would file a complaint with HR but considering this was the company that had produced Miss A, he assumed the company wouldn’t care until they started attacking each other with pitchforks.

His patience reached its limit at dance practice of all places, a space that had been yet unmarred by their interpersonal issues. Practice was practice, and that had never changed, even during their worst fights. Minho ran a tight ship, and they all cared enough about music to put their issues aside at least for a three-hour period and focus on their art.

Today, Jeongin knew it was going to be a mess before it even happened. Hyunjin and Jisung were bickering about something, which wasn't exactly new, but what was new was how everybody else seemed to be divided into factions. Felix flinched every time Jisung spoke, like the words were directed at him instead of Hyunjin, and Changbin tone was a little too sharp when he told Jisung to quit it. Chan seemed angry at Minho for some reason, who for his part was doing an excellent job of ignoring Hyunjin and Chan altogether, only speaking to everyone else if he had a specific correction for them to make. The air was absolutely lousy with malice.

Two hours in, Jisung missed a step. Unlike all the other nitpicking they'd been doing all afternoon, he did actually step out too far this time, arriving to his position too early and nearly colliding with Seungmin. Seungmin twisted in an effort to avoid him, and Jeongin watched Seungmin wobble on the heel of his foot before deciding to bail altogether and flip around to fall on his butt, wincing slightly as his hand hit the floor and sent what must've been a harsh jolt up his arm that made him gasp in pain.

"Seungmin!"

Jisung stopped short, almost falling himself in an effort to pivot towards his friend. "Are you okay? I'm so sorry."

"I’m fine," Seungmin said, already shifting to stand up again. Jisung reached out a hand for Seungmin to pull himself up, but Hyunjin wedged in sideways and knelt down beside him.

"Are you sure? You didn't tweak your wrist or anything?"

Seungmin turned his wrist over in his other hand, flexing his fingers in turn. "It's fine," he declared. "It was just a shock."

"Are you sure you don't need it looked at?"

Seungmin opened his mouth to answer, but Jisung beat him to it. "If he says it's fine then it's fine. I'm sure he knows what a sprained wrist feels like."

"You could pretend to be worried about him."

"Pretend? Of course I’m worried. I asked if he was okay!"

"Guys, let's just-" but Seungmin was cut off before the thought was even finished.

"You guys are holding up practice," Minho interjected. "It's a minor fall. There's no reason for all this."

"Holding up practice?" Hyunjin whirled, looking almost betrayed. "So, me wanting to make sure Seungmin is okay is an inconvenience to you all?”

"Seungmin never said he wanted your help."

Jeongin could already see Seungmin's jaw working, shoulders hunching up as all the day’s negative energy collected right where he was sitting.

"Seungmin wouldn't need my help if you hadn't bumped into him."

"I didn't even touch him! Seungmin, tell Hyunjin I didn't even touch you-"

Jeongin had enough. He stormed forward, breaking up the cluster that Jisung and Hyunjin had formed around Seungmin and hauling him to his feet. Seungmin had a very quick reaction time and regained his balance without a hint of struggle, but Jeongin still didn't let go of Seungmin's arm.

"Are we really going to do this here?" Jeongin asked, looking directly at Jisung and Hyunjin. "And you're going to involve Seungmin in your stupid fight?"

"We're not having a stupid fight," Hyunjin said, voice tight. "That's not what this is."

"And how the fuck would we know what it is? It's not like you tell us anything these days." Weeks of pressure and tension and hiding and lying bubbled up high in Jeongin's chest, making his voice loud and a bit hysterical. "It's like we're outsiders in our own fucking group."

Chan stepped forward now, already in leader-mode, hands raised toward Jeongin like he was calming a fussy child. "Iyen-ah, that's not what's happening. We just didn't want to involve you all in our mess."

"Well, we're involved," Jeongin snapped. "We can't even get through dance practice without everything being tangled up in your situationship, or whatever it is. Since we only exist to you when we're at work, I’d hoped we could all be normal for three fucking hours, but even that is asking too-"

"Jeongin," Seungmin said from behind him. "Let's just go."

Jeongin turned to look at Seungmin, about to fire off something at him too, just to keep his tirade going, but the look on his hyung's face made his words die in his throat. Seungmin looked mad. Tight-lipped, nostrils flared mad.

Seungmin was a notoriously tough nut to crack. He was good at letting things slide over him and didn't have a habit of holding out for apologies before forgiving someone. He was nice that way. But still, he wasn't a pushover, and he'd never hesitated to let the others know when they were doing something wrong. Considering that, Jeongin supposed it was stupid of him to not think Seungmin was as annoyed as he was. Despite his unaffected demeanor, there was nothing Seungmin hated more in the world than being spoken over.

"I’ll call someone to take us back to the dorm," Seungmin said towards Chan, who seemed frozen in place by the amount of sheer malice emanating off the pair of them. "We'll make up the time later this week, on our own. I can't be around this anymore."

Chan was too overwhelmed to object, and after giving him a few moments to forever hold his peace, Seungmin turned and walked towards the door, tugging Jeongin along with him. Jeongin stumbled a bit before he pulled his hand back and regained his pace at Seungmin's side. The room was silent as they picked their bags and coats off the floor and exited the practice room, but Jeongin didn't feel exposed. He just felt hurt.

When they'd left, and the blood stopped rushing in Jeongin's ears, he fizzled back into focus to see Seungmin on the phone, calling them a ride. He hung up just after Jeongin noticed him, and his face was still flushed with anger, but Jeongin was pretty sure it wasn't at him. At least, he didn't think so.

"I’m sorry for speaking for you," he said, since that seemed like the most important thing to correct. "I got mad at them talking over you but then I did the same thing."

"It’s not even close to the same thing," Seungmin rebuffed, voice flat. "If you hadn't started yelling I would've." Seungmin's hands clenched into fists, pulsing at his sides. "Let's go home. I don't want to think about this anymore."

Jeongin shrugged on his coat and followed Seungmin without a word.

Their driver didn't ask why they were traveling alone. Maybe Seungmin had already said, or maybe it didn't matter. Maybe it would get kicked back to Chan in the coming days, which Jeongin didn't try very hard to feel bad about. Normally he hated making things difficult for Chan, but now Jeongin would've subjected him to Sisyphus’s eternal torment if it meant he didn't have to be around the others for a while. His feelings, their feelings, Seungmin's anger, Hyunjin’s silence, it was all too much too much too much. He wanted to take an hour-long shower. He wanted to curl up under one of Felix's thick blankets and not move for sixteen straight hours.

They separated when they got home, Seungmin shutting himself in his room without another word while Jeongin stripped off his shoes and jacket in the living room, trying to leave all his baneful energy in the entryway.

He took his long shower, and then wrapped himself in a robe to go forage for food in the kitchen. The others weren't back yet, but Jeongin wasn't exactly watching the clock. He heavily doubted they'd bothered to finish practice. Maybe they'd gone to the 3RACHA dorm, hoping to give them some space. In that case, good. Jeongin hoped they didn't return until long after dark, or maybe ever.

Seungmin reappeared an indeterminate time later, as Jeongin was eating some pastries from the bottom shelf. He was dressed in new sweats and thick socks. He opened the fridge, scowled at its contents, then rummaged in the pantry for teabags and raw honey. Jeongin didn't attempt to say anything. He still didn't really know what to say. When Seungmin turned around to face the stove, Jeongin saw the skin around his eyes was red and puffy. The only sound was the clinking of dishware and long-stemmed teaspoons.

"You're staring," Seungmin said finally.

"You're ignoring me."

"I can't be tired now? I don't have anything to say."

"Great," Jeongin said, a tad bitter. "Now we're going to end up in our own fucked up situationship."

Seungmin rounded so fast Jeongin thought he might spill boiling water all over the floor.

"That's not funny," he said, voice so serious that it could command pigs to fly. "Especially not today."

"Have you been crying?"

"Shut up, Jeongin. There's already been so much today, and I can't- I can't, okay?" He took a long breath in, and it was still shaky on the way out. "I said I didn't wanna talk about this right now."

Jeongin wanted to push. He wanted to know why Seungmin was crying. But the situation was so delicate, and honestly, he didn't want to talk about it either.

"Okay, fine, sorry, hyung." Jeongin shrunk down in his seat, nibbling morosely on his cherry pastry. Seungmin turned back around and continued fiddling with his kettle and cups, and then a cup of tea materialized in front of Jeongin, in his own favorite cup that Jeongin hadn't seen Seungmin take down. Seungmin slid next to him, holding his own blue mug, and filched one of Jeongin's pastries without a second glance.

"Hey!" he said, out of reflex more than anything, but Seungmin didn't dignify him with a reaction, biting into the cake like it had been his all along. Jeongin scowled, but he picked up his cup of tea anyway and took a sip. Of course it was made just how he liked it, which was even more annoying.

Without either of them doing anything about it, the tension slowly eked out of the room. Everything that had been loud and violent in his head quieted back into the cells he kept them in, and Seungmin's face cleared up, stopped looking so puffy and exhausted. Jeongin cleaned up the table without a word, throwing away empty wrappers and soaked teabags and rinsing out their mugs. When he slid into a new seat, opposite Seungmin, he was greeted with a grateful smile, and the last bit of discomfort drained out of his chest.

"Thank you," Seungmin said, tone light even though it was clearly a very loaded phrase. Jeongin responded in kind.

"What else can I do? You're getting too old to be doing chores around the house."

"That joke doesn't work on me. I'm so spry and youthful. I look younger than you."

"You know they say that people who age slow actually die quicker?"

"Oh, why don't you-"

And just like that, it was a normal Tuesday again, and there was nothing wrong in the world within their doors.

Easy.

(And if Seungmin crawled into Jeongin's bed that night, fingers cold and shaking, then that was fine and easy too. That's what Jeongin was for, after all. For Seungmin to rely on.)

Minho and Felix didn't return that night. In the morning, Seungmin’s phone lit up with several text notifications.

"Who's that?" Jeongin asked as Seungmin scowled and set his phone back on the bedside table. Seungmin buried himself back under the blankets, his hair splayed cutely across the pillow, messy and falling in his eyes.

"Hyunjin," Seungmin said. "He’s asking me to go over so he can apologize."

"He's the only one with enough nerve?"

"Jisung called me yesterday, but I declined it.”

A spark of irritation formed in Jeongin's stomach. No one had contacted him at all since their dramatic exit from the practice room. He knew he was the one who'd made a scene, but the pettier part of himself was unwilling to reach out first.

Seungmin’s phone dinged again. Seungmin groaned and snaked a hand out of their warm cocoon to find the phone again.

“He says to bring you along,” Seungmin read.

“Me?”

“You deserve an apology too.”

Jeongin huffed, even though he’d just been thinking the exact same thing.

“Do we have to?”

“We should,” Seungmin said, though he didn’t sound that happy about it either. “We should set a good example for them. Spite ages your skin.”

“Here we go again.”

Despite their agreement, they languished in the warmth of Seungmin’s bed a little longer. It was getting colder outside, just barely, and the floor was cold when you stepped out. It took Jeongin a solid five minutes to psych himself up, and even then, it was still with painful regret that he separated himself from Seungmin and climbed out of bed.

He didn’t feel like walking to his own room, but he didn’t want to go to this meeting in clothes he slept in, so he started rifling through Seungmin’s closet. Seungmin held out a few moments longer before sitting up and rubbing his eyes. He shot off a text to Hyunjin telling him they were coming, and then just sat and watched Jeongin get dressed.

“Stealing my clothes?” he asked, as if he cared.

“Crime of convenience,” Jeongin rebutted. There were some wardrobe staples that they all had so many of- gray sweats, black hoodies, beanies, white tees- that for all Jeongin knew they got mixed up in the wash and he was actually stealing his own stuff back. When he finished picking out his own clothes, he gathered out a second set and handed them to Seungmin, along with a pair of socks, just so he didn’t have to get up and traipse across the cold floor on bare feet like Jeongin had. No point in both of them suffering.

Seungmin thanked him for the clothes, and they both made themselves presentable, splashing water on their faces and taming down the worst of their bedheads.

“I would’ve brought you anyway,” Seungmin said offhandedly as Jeongin unplugged his own phone from where he’d left it charging the previous night.

“For what? Moral support?” Jeongin asked, completely non-serious, but Seungmin simply said,

“Yes,”

And when Jeongin saw Seungmin’s dead honest expression and remembered how he’d been the previous day, with wet eyes and a hoarse voice, and the words evaporated off his tongue.

“Okay,” was all he said. “Your wish is my command.”

When they arrived at the 3RACHA+Hyunjin dorm, the air was so thick even a knife couldn’t cut it. Everyone was sitting on couches, chairs, the messy floor. They all looked tense. Jeongin and Seungmin were directed to sit across from everybody, so they were enclosed in a semicircle of their members. Jeongin felt upsettingly like he was on trial, but he couldn’t figure out for what crime.

“Okay,” Chan said finally, when it became clear the tension in the air wasn’t going to evaporate. “Thank you for being willing to hear us out. This conversation has been a very long time coming.”

Jeongin’s heart drops into his stomach. He knows, exactly what this conversation is about, and what they’re going to tell him. Already, his body shifts into overdrive, locking his emotions somewhere deep inside himself where he can chain them up until this discussion is over.

“Oh?” was all he said. Chan nodded gravely.

“We’re aware that we may have been creating an…inhospitable working environment.”

“We were being jerks,” Jisung said. “I’m sorry again, Seungmin, both for knocking into you and putting you in the middle of our fight.”

“I’m sorry too,” Hyunjin said. “I made your injury all about myself.”

“It’s fine,” Seungmin said. “You’re forgiven.”

Jeongin felt a sense of smallness settle in him and relented. “I should apologize too. I shouldn’t have yelled at you guys. Or you, hyung.”

“No, you were right,” Chan said. “You saying what you said…it made us all realize how stupid we were being.”

“And how unfair,” Minho said. “It was fine for us to be upset, but we didn’t realize it was affecting both of you so negatively. You said it was like you didn’t exist to us when we weren’t at work, and that’s true. We were caught up in ourselves. We’re sorry for that too.”

“Okay,” Jeongin said, because saying they were forgiven would be a lie. It hadn’t been fun, being left out and used as cannon fodder in their arguments. Just because they knew it now didn’t take away the hurt.

Seungmin didn’t say anything. Minho didn’t make any exact expression at their lack of forgiveness, but Jeongin could see on Jisung and Felix’s faces that they were doused with regret. He wanted for a minute to elaborate, to say something that would brush away all the agony of the past few months, but Seungmin stepped in before he could say something foolish.

“Does this mean we can actually hear what’s going on now?” Seungmin asked. “Or should we go back to pretending to be blind?”

Hyunjin winced, but he was the one to say. “No, we can explain now. We shouldn’t have taken this long to tell you in the first place.” He went to continue but faltered. “I’m not sure where you want us to start.”

This is where Jeongin interjected. “I don’t think we need to hear the whole story right now. I just want to know what was going on last month that was making everyone so on edge.”

Seungmin eyed him briefly, but he didn’t object. Jeongin hoped he hadn’t superseded him, but he just didn’t think he could bear hearing the play by play of the last few months, detailing everyone’s actions in precise and excruciating detail. Bad enough to have to hear it and imagine it, even worse having to know for sure.

“Right.” Hyunjin swallowed. “Well, Changbin and I were hooking up. I know you know this.”

Seungmin and Jeongin both nodded.

“And then we both started hooking up with Felix, but separately, not like, together. We started getting messily entwined, the three of us, and I freaked out a little. I asked Changbin for a break so I could figure out what we were doing and what I wanted. I didn’t handle it the best, and I placed blame on Felix where I shouldn’t have.”

“That’s not what you did,” Felix said. “It was just a misunderstanding.”

Hyunjin shrugged, clearly not convinced of his own innocence. “It also just wasn’t a conversation any of us were ready to have. So Changbin defended Felix, obviously, and then it telephoned to everyone else, and I can’t really speak on everyone else’s perspective, but it shook up everyone else’s relationships too.”

“It just made us realize that what we were doing wasn’t sustainable,” Chan explained. “When we all started sleeping together, I don’t think any of us envisioned an endpoint, so when Hyunjin asked for one, it made us realize the precarity of the situation. None of us actually wanted to stop, though, so we were lying to ourselves and too each other. Communication kind of broke down, and Hyunjin was at the center, even though in hindsight he was the one with the most sense.”

Changbin sighed, moving from his place on the couch to say his own piece. “I was overly defensive from the start. I latched on to Hyunjin’s wording as a way of ignoring his point, which was correct. I didn’t want to talk about it because I thought the solution we’d reach was to break up, which wasn’t what I wanted. I didn’t want to choose between Felix and Hyunjin, or be left alone, so I started avoiding him as a way of avoiding the situation. But that’s not a solution either. It was immature of me.”

“We were all immature in the same way,” Jisung said drily. “So I think you’re excused.”

“So, you’ve talked, now?” Seungmin asked.

Chan nodded. “After you stormed out, we all packed up and came back here, and we had it all out last night. It took a while, but we all said everything we needed to say.”

“We wanted to go after you, but we figured we’d done enough damage, and that you needed space from us. We also didn’t want to approach you without being able to give you the answers you might want,” Felix added. He seemed to steel himself, then said, “That’s also why we wanted to talk to you and officially tell you that we’re done with all the hiding and sneaking around. We won’t lie to you anymore, and we aren’t lying to each other. No more situationship nonsense will be happening.”

“So, you’re just all dating, then?” Jeongin said, astonished at how normal he sounded. “Like normal people who aren’t being tortured about it?”

Chan cracked a smile, but it was malformed, anxious. “Yes, we are. We all love each other, romantically. And now that we’ve accepted those feelings, we’ve decided we want to make it work, all of us, together.”

It was like Jeongin’s soul was being origami folded into some deep dark corner of his hollow mortal casing. He knew that this would be the end result. He knew. He’d hoped for it, even, prayed that his bandmates would someday come to their senses and just accept they were all in love with each other, and then they could actually be happy together instead of messy and stressed and hectic. This is what he wanted for them.

But even still a small, traitorous part of him had hoped that this conversation might take a different turn. He’d hoped, how ever asinine, that his hyungs might give it one last try, would tell Jeongin and Seungmin that they were in love with them, too, that they adored them and they know they didn’t go about it the right way but could they talk about it now, maybe? That they’d spent last night running numbers and came to the conclusion that they just couldn’t do this without them, that it needed to be all eight of them or it wouldn’t feel right, that they’d been feeling Jeongin and Seungmin’s absence like an open wound all this time, that they wished they’d come to them before, but they were too scared, they were unsure, but they’re not anymore.

But that wasn’t going to happen. Jeongin had shut them out too well, had let it all blow up in his face. He’d made himself undesirable. And despite the derisive tone in his head, Jeongin himself was scared and unsure, so he couldn’t say anything either.

You can’t have everything you want, Jeongin reminded himself. None of us can.”

He tightened the lock on his selfish and traitorous emotions, summoned his usual nonchalance, and said, “Great. Congratulations.”

Chan blinked. “Just okay?”

“Did I not say it enthusiastically enough?”

“No, it’s just…we were worried about your reaction.”

“We’ve been expecting this to happen for a long time,” Seungmin said gently. “We were rooting for you guys. We wanted you to be happy.”

“You…were?”

“Yes,” Jeongin jumped in, piggybacking of the tone Seungmin had set. “It was hard to watch you all struggle like that, so we’re glad you sorted it all out. Yes, it wasn’t nice to be ignored, but we weren’t the ones having the problem, in the end.”

“Still, we made our problem your problem, which wasn’t fair. We’re sorry you guys ever felt like you weren’t important to us, or that we didn’t want you around,” Felix said. “And that’s still true. We love you both. This new arrangement doesn’t change anything about that.”

Either Felix was painfully optimistic or lying through his teeth. Of course it changed things. Maybe things would be better than they’d been recently, but nothing would go back to the way it was before. That life (and that love) was long gone now.

“We love you too,” Seungmin said, because if Jeongin said it, he’d mean it too much. “And we believe you, so don’t worry too much. We know you never meant to hurt us.”

They were, though. Hurting them, that is. Jeongin forced himself out of his body and turned to look at Seungmin, who looked exactly like he always did, calm and bright-eyed and relaxed, except he wasn’t.  It might’ve been because they’d spent nearly every waking minute together for the past six weeks, but Jeongin knew that Seungmin wasn’t calm at all. There was a quiet tension in his neck, and an odd note in his tone, like the words were getting stuck somewhere. The others didn’t notice, caught up in their own relief and growing elation-or maybe they just didn’t know Seungmin like Jeongin did, like Jeongin always has-but Seungmin was not being honest. He wasn’t calm or relaxed. And he wasn’t happy. He, like Jeongin, had pushed the unhappiness deep down in the pit of his stomach, but Jeongin knew it was there. He could sense it. His own despair called to it like a homing beacon, two pits born of the same unending void.

“Thank you for being honest with us,” Jeongin said, hoping they could wrap up this conversation before his throat tightened so much that he couldn’t breathe. “I know it was hard.”

“Thank you for being patient while we were all being idiots,” Jisung said. “I can’t imagine how annoying it must’ve been from the outside.”

“Well, you guys are idiots every day,” Jeongin said. “The larger scale wasn’t that much of a difference.”

It did the trick of breaking the still lingering tension, and just like that, the ghost of the last two months was exorcised from their dorm. Gone was the anxiety and panic and secrecy, and the feeling in the group was almost…warm. Synergistic, just like they always are. Like they were meant to be. But even though the warmth was there, and Jeongin could feel it, it didn’t feel like his. It wasn’t inside him where it normally was.

His six hyungs on the other side of the room suddenly felt as if they were in a different universe than Jeongin. As if he’d never be able to reach out and touch them again. As if he’d only ever speak to their afterimage.

So this was rejection. Sixfold, even. All the worse because he’d seen it coming for miles and it still shot him into outer space.

Although the tension was broken, the serious panes of the conversation continue. His hyungs proposed that out of respect for them, they’d try to keep most of their trysts to the 3RACHA dorm, which Seungmin and Jeongin protested on principle, saying they didn’t want to kick Minho and Felix out of their rooms, don’t be ridiculous. There was a bit of talk of room shuffling in general, but that would be suspicious, and also a lot of work, so the topic was dropped. Everyone’s camera personas would stay the same, and as of yet, they didn’t want to let the company on to the fact that anything has changed, which Jeongin thought was a bit of a meaningless precaution. If they were all dating, then the only thing different is that their collective “fanservice” would be cracked up to 11, which would make their SKZ-CODE director’s day. Still, you could never be too careful, and anyway, they were supposed to be practicing communicating expectations, so Jeongin understood why they had to say it out loud.

“And if we start ignoring you again,” Minho said finally. “Or leaving you out, or we’re putting you in situations you don’t want to be in, tell us. You can be mean about it if you want to. We won’t get mad.”

“Yes,” Hyunjin said emphatically. “We want you to be comfortable too. This is your home, and you’re our family. We don’t want to make you uncomfortable. It’s not rude if it’s making you upset.”

Something about Hyunjin saying that was so riddled with irony that Jeongin realized with sudden certainty that he was about to be pushed over the edge and absolutely lose it in front of all his group members. He gave Hyunjin a nod, told him he understood, then excused himself to the bathroom, the words repeating endlessly in his head.

You’re our family, Hyunjin said. It’s not rude if it’s making you upset. It doesn’t square with their conversation from two weeks ago, doesn’t square with Hyunjin’s devastation, his withdrawn anger. It doesn’t square with the way he’d shut Jeongin down when he said he loved Hyunjin, because that kind of love didn’t count- the kind Hyunjin had interpreted as familial, platonic. That kind of love wasn’t good enough for Hyunjin. Something being undeniably true, Jeongin knew, didn’t make it desirable. All his members were dating each other, and they did not want Jeongin to be a part of it. Their love for him was not the same as their love for each other. And it never would be.

And Jeongin would just have to be okay with this.

Apparently, everyone decided that his bathroom break indicated a natural end to this painstakingly long conversation, because when he returned from the bathroom, everyone had dispersed. Seungmin was standing by the door, tapping on his phone, and Jeongin beelined towards him, but was stopped by Hyunjin standing in his path. He looked so much more relaxed than he had even the day before, skin less pale and eyes full of life and mirth. And why wouldn’t he be full of mirth? He’d been cleared of all wrongdoing and now has five boyfriends to boot. Isn’t he just the biggest fucking winner of the day’s events.

“Hey, I was wondering if you wanted to go out with me this afternoon,” Hyunjin said. “We haven’t had a meal together in so long.”

Hyunjin’s words were still echoing around in his skull, and Jeongin, though it’s petulant and mean, did not want to be around any of his six eldest hyungs at all.

“Sorry, I already had plans with Seungmin-hyung,” he said. “But we’ll have time later, right?”

Hyunjin looked a bit put out, but he nodded. “Right. We will. You two have fun.”

Jeongin waved as he left, Seungmin following behind him, and they both crossed the hall to duck into their own dorm room, which was blessedly empty, Felix and Minho off God-knows-where again. They went to Seungmin’s room and kicked their shoes off into the corner, and Jeongin lasted about ten solid seconds before the chains fell off his despair and then he was gasping, struggling to breathe under the weight of his own heartsickness.

“Innie,” Seungmin said, his voice mournful as he pulled Jeongin onto the bed beside him. “It’s okay. You’ll be okay.”

“I feel horrible,” Jeongin said between shaky breaths. “I should be happy for them. I am happy for them. I don’t know why I’m reacting like this.”

“Because it’s hard. It hurts me too. I wish…” Seungmin trailed off, his own voice strangled. “You can’t help how you feel, just like they can’t.”

Jeongin knew this. He’d known it the whole time. That didn’t make any easier to see right in front of his face.

“They love us,” Jeongin tried to remind himself, calming himself by sheer force of will, forcing himself not to give in to his heartbreak. “Even if it’s not the way we want, they love us.”

“I don’t think that makes it better,” Seungmin admitted.

“It has to,” Jeongin said. “We don’t have a choice.”

And they didn’t. So Seungmin just nodded, and after a while he wiped his tears away, as well as Jeongin’s, and they laid on Seungmin’s bed until their limbs stopped feeling heavy and their hearts stopped pounding in their chests, and they somehow found the willpower to continue with their day. It couldn’t possibly be called “plans”, but they also couldn’t possibly be anywhere except together, so Jeongin figured his white lie was close enough to the truth that Hyunjin might forgive him for it.

Ever since their group conversation, the others had been both more and less obvious in their affection. It wasn't that anyone kept their hands to themselves (Jeongin didn't think they could do that if they tried) but the furtive nature of it had gone away. Rather than dragging each other away into hidden corners, or sneaking around hallways and locking doors, everyone just existed in the same space, casual touches and kisses dispersed freely. Chan kissed Felix when he got home from work late, and Minho called Jisung "princess" when he was giving him orders in the kitchen, and Hyunjin, with the demeanor of a barely-socialized cat, willingly let Changbin manhandle him on the sofa when they were watching movies, curling his long limbs up as small as possible so they could fit together. Now that everything was out in the open, everyone was more relaxed. Their dynamic had never been better.

Jeongin had never felt so maligned in his whole life.

It was unbelievably hypocritical of him to be complaining about all the PDA when not two weeks prior he'd complained about them being overly secretive, but it turned out that the evil you know is often better than the evil you don't. Jealousy wasn't even the right word. It wasn’t strong enough.

It didn’t help that he held grudges, and that he was a creature of habit to boot. It also didn’t help that the feeling of being othered constantly reinforced itself, even during instances that were initially positive. After being excluded from the others for so long, he found himself frequently annoyed when they interrupted his routine in a hesitant bid for connection. Jisung asked to eat lunch with him, and Jeongin was so out of practice for this specific social interaction that he didn’t even know what to say.

“Sorry, but I already made plans with Seungmin,” he chose to say. It was his go-to excuse these days, aided greatly by the fact that it was pretty much always true.

“Oh, really? Where were you guys gonna go?”

Jeongin blinked, not expecting the continued pushback. “Just out. I was craving American food.”

“Oh, okay.” Jisung was twitchy, the way he was when he wanted to say something but was struggling to gather the nerve. It’s only by divine mercy that Jeongin is approaching a tipping point where instead of getting sick with fondness, a burst of irritation peeks through.

“I just thought, you know, you and I haven’t spent a lot of time together. I haven’t spent any money on you in weeks.”

“You’re going to go broke by thirty,” Jeongin critiqued. “If you want to go out and buy food you don’t have to justify it by also buying some for me.”

“Can’t I do something nice for you?” Jisung asked, properly pouting now. “I’m sick of being cooped up here. It’ll be fun to go out.”

Jeongin wanted to keep resisting, but there was really no point. Jisung was stubborn, and the alternative to stubbornness was him limping away like a kicked puppy, and Jeongin couldn’t be both annoyed at Jisung and feel guilty at the same time. He takes out his phone and pulls up Seungmin’s contact.

“Might as well pay for me and Seungmin both. Let me call him.”

Seungmin answered on the first ring, and when Jeongin explained the proposal, he hesitated in a similar way Jeongin had.

“Jisung wants to go out with us? Just for fun?”

“It’s free food, hyung,” Jeongin said. “Our budgets are out of whack after being left to starve all summer.”

“You can go on your own,” Seungmin said. “I’ll go find Changbin for lunch.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes. Have fun.”

The line went dead.

Something about Seungmin’s tone had been…off. The refusal itself was off. Seungmin didn’t like changing plans, true, but his solution was more of a change than Jisung tagging alone. And why did he doubt Jisung’s intentions? “Just for fun?” Why else would Jisung come along?

Jisung was standing right there, waiting, so Jeongin put all those worries aside.

“He said he got caught up in something and would eat later. We can just go ourselves. Come on.”

They ended up at a restaurant a few streets away from their dorm, and Jeongin forced Jisung to spend a truly egregious amount of money on meat and rice cakes and refills of expensive herbal scented drinks that didn’t even taste that good, but Jisung was a good sport about it the whole way. If Jeongin let his mind wander, let his body and mouth move on automatic, it felt just like Before, when they were all on an even playing field.

That lasted until they made their way back to the dorm, and Minho appeared out of thin air to drag Jisung away back into his room, leaving Jeongin by himself again.

Which was fine. Of course it was. It’s what he had expected.

He expected it again when he was spending time in the studio with Chan, and they got interrupted by Felix wanting to show him something. Jeongin milled around for a while, and they weren’t being specifically unwelcoming in any way, but Jeongin still felt that the conversation was tinged with something he wasn’t meant to hear, so he left. He found Seungmin in a practice room and joined him running vocal drills. He expected it again when he was on the phone with Changbin and Changbin switched the call to Hyunjin’s line, and either the call never ended or Changbin forgot to switch it back, because the line went dead a while later and Jeongin just turned his phone off and went for a walk. Changbin actually apologized for that one later, and Jeongin accepted it, but he complained about it to Seungmin later, who told him that Chan did the same thing a week earlier, and not to take it personally (both of them did, in fact, take it very personally).

Rejections like this, though smaller and less frequent than they had been before, were still present in Jeongin’s everyday life. However, unlike the previous months, these interruptions were not going to be resolved by some forthcoming emotional reckoning.  They weren’t excluding Jeongin and Seungmin out of stress, or self-preservation. They were excluding them because Seungmin and Jeongin were fundamentally not on the same emotional plane as them. The others were in the honeymoon stage of a relationship that was hard-won for all of them. Seungmin and Jeongin were just their roommates. The priority level was obviously skewed to Jeongin’s detriment. You’re still our friends and teammates, we still love you the same, Felix had said. But that was exactly the problem. They loved Seungmin and Jeongin the same, and they loved each other more.

If Seungmin felt the same way, he didn't say so. Seungmin was always better at minding his business, though. Before this year, Jeongin wouldn't have considered himself nosy either, but it turns out that being in love with someone makes you pretty damn invested in the goings on of their daily life. This was where Seungmin had the better deal, in Jeongin's opinion. At least he wasn't rotting away in his bed every night like a teenage girl about it all. Still, he kept on a normal face when he hung out with the hyungs, since that was what it seemed they wanted from him, and acted like he wasn't living in some kind of dark comedy centered on his own dwindling sanity.

Over time, Jeongin learned to be gracious. He initiated get-togethers and accepted invitations and didn’t start any more yelling matches when the plans got overturned. And as the others settled into their new dynamics and some brain space was finally freed up, things did actually return to normal. Jeongin was back to being teased by Chan, being clung to by Hyunjin and Jisung. He could catch Felix’s eye backstage when the others did something stupid, he could bask in the pride in Minho’s eyes when he followed his marks correctly. Being treated well made it easier to feel happy for his members (and wow, who could’ve predicted that?) As everyone’s focus improved, Jeongin’s resentment faded away.

What didn’t fade was the intensity of his attachment to Seungmin.

In some loop that was surely adjacent to infinite recursion, being so consistently passed over by the others had made him a bit…possessive of Seungmin, the only person who consistently chose Jeongin over everyone else. It wasn’t something he noticed right away, what with everything going on, but he realized soon enough that they way he’d been considering his and Seungmin’s relationship had shifted, without his notice, to something uncomfortably familiar to previous events.

One of the first instances was when they were out at the store, shopping for new jackets for the coming winter, and Seungmin kept looking at his phone. It was Seungmin who dragged Jeongin out anyway, claiming that Jeongin had better fashion taste (or more accurate, stronger opinions than Seungmin about what he should and shouldn’t be wearing) and that if he was going to spend all season complaining about his outfits then he should just choose the jacket himself. Jeongin frequently chose Seungmin’s outfits, both due to the aforementioned complaining as well as Seungmin’s laziness, so he’d jumped at the chance to make both their lives easier and buy a jacket that didn’t hurt his eyes to look at. But Seungmin didn’t seem to be invested. He nodded at some of the options Jeongin pulled, and rejected a few of the more outlandish ones, but his attention kept wandering to the conversation he was having on his phone, the device buzzing if Seungmin put it down for more than half a second.

Normally, Jeongin really wouldn’t care. He was also a bit of a phone addict, and he had friends with crazy schedules, so he understood sometimes conversations just happened when they happened. He also spent every waking minute with Seungmin in some form or another, so it really wasn’t fair of him to feel deprived of his attention. He did feel deprived, though. Even more so when Jeongin asked him who he was talking to, and Seungmin just said “a friend.”

It was a totally acceptable response. Jeongin didn’t have a right to any more information than that. He didn’t even have the right to be upset. He eventually picked out a jacket that was suitable for the majority of Seungmin’s wardrobe and wrapped up the trip as fast as possible. That maligned feeling he used to feel towards the others started to creep in his gut. Jeongin ignored it.

The feeling came again when he caught Seungmin, Felix, and Hyunjin sitting in the living room, watching another dumb drama on TV. The thing was it was his dumb drama. The one he’d introduced to Seungmin a week prior, the one they were watching together. He’d been meaning to set aside time for them to finish it, he genuinely hadn’t so much as looked at the thumbnail since they watched the first three episodes together, but here Seungmin was, finishing the entire show without him.

Which also wasn’t a big deal. It was just a TV show. They watched them all the time. Felix and Hyunjin (though the latter hated to admit it) were also fans of trashy TV, and it made sense that Seungmin would think to show it to them, because Jeongin was great at finding bad shows to watch and the pilot was absolutely hilarious. It wasn’t anything to get mad over. It was such a small thing, really, to be making him feel so ugly.

Jisung saw him standing to the side and gave him a bright smile. “Hey, Innie. Have you seen this shit? The second lead is crazy.”

Jeongin fixed his eyes solely on Jisung and slipped back into his role of flippancy and good sportsmanship and said,

“Yes, I have.”

Jeongin tried to put it to rest. He knew he was being irrational, unreasonable. He was feeling jealous of Seungmin having other friends, even friends that Jeongin also had, for…what reason, exactly? Jeongin didn’t consider himself to be possessive most of the time, or, well, he supposed he was working on it. He valued his own autonomy too much to be disrespectful of other people’s right to the same.

He didn’t realize that his dilemma was visible to others until Felix asked him about it.

“You and Seungmin have been hanging out a lot lately,” Felix said observationally, as if he was commenting on the weather. They were in the lobby of the JYPE building, waiting for a car to come and take them to some studio or another, and Seungmin was momentarily distracted by Minho, giving Felix an opening. Felix was good at being opportunistic in that way; he was catlike in how he seemed to teleport to exactly where he needed to be.

Jeongin shrugged. “We hang out a lot all the time.”

“I guess so. It’s been different lately, though. You’re clingier. You never used to let on that you cared so much.”

Goosebumps rose on Jeongin’s skin. “He’s clingier, for sure. I just haven’t been that good at shaking him.”

Felix nodded, completely unconvinced. “Right.”

Jeongin thought for a moment that that would be the end of it, but Felix’s interventions were always multi-phase. He rarely let you go once you were caught. He continued in that same casual tone.

“I just want to make sure you guys are okay. I don’t want you making our mistakes.”

That was enough to stop Jeongin flat, and also enough to make him realize that if they’d reached this point, if Felix was crossing a line that even he and Seungmin hadn’t dared cross, then maybe Jeongin did, unfortunately, have to do something to figure this all out.

“Thank you for your concern, hyung,” Jeongin said. “I’ll put it under consideration.”

Felix smiled, and then the car arrived, and Felix slid into the crowd, off to claim a seat next to someone else.

Jeongin thought about Felix’s comments the entire day and much of the next, but in the end, he gave up on forming a plan of attack and just knocked on Seungmin’s door. Seungmin told him to come in (of course he did, when didn’t he) and Jeongin walked in and sat on Seungmin’s bed, where he was lying on his back and reading a book.

“Aren’t your arms tired?” Jeongin asked, just to have something to do with his mouth.

“Some of us have ligaments strong enough to hold up our own arms for longer than five seconds,” Seungmin responded.

Jeongin didn’t bother responding. He just settled in place next to Seungmin and poked at his arm. If he spent too long on pleasantries, he’d lose his nerve.

“We need to talk,” he said.

“About?”

“About our relationship.”

Seungmin paused, peering at Jeongin from behind the cover of his book. “Our friendship, you mean.”

“No, hyung. Our relationship.”

Something in Jeongin’s tone must’ve indicated his seriousness, because Seungmin set the book aside and sat up on the bed, giving Jeongin his full attention. They were face to face. He waited for Jeongin to say something, which was good, because Jeongin needed the grace period to sort his thoughts out.

“Recently, I’ve realized that our friendship is getting kind of…intense. I know we already discussed that we don’t necessarily feel for each other like we do for the rest of our members, but there’s been some kind of shift and I thought we should talk about it.”

“A shift?” Seungmin asked.

“I don’t know how to explain it. I’ve been feeling a lot of jealousy lately, about you ignoring me. I know you’re not ignoring me, but it’s felt that way. It’s a kind of…possessiveness, I think. I’m not used to it.”

“Ignoring you? When have I ignored you?”

“That day we went shopping for parkas,” Jeongin mumbled. “You spent the whole trip texting instead of talking to me.”

Seungmin moved like he was going to protest, but then the memory clicked into place. “Oh. I didn’t realize I was being rude.”

“You weren’t, really. I just took it personally. I took it personally again when you were watching that dumb teen drama with Felix and Hyunjin. I know it was just a show, but I felt betrayed, somehow…” He felt stupid even as he said it.

Seungmin leaned forward, a little, crossing his legs and tucking his heels to his core. “It isn’t really about the jacket, though, or the show, is it?”

Jeongin shook his head.

“Do you have a crush on me?”

“No, I don’t. I would know.”

“Would you?”

Jeongin bristled. “Do you think I would come here and bring this up to you if I had a crush on you, knowing you wouldn’t reciprocate? Why would I tell you just to guilt you?”

Seungmin faltered. “I guess you wouldn’t.”

Jeongin let out a slow breath. “Felix approached me and asked me what was going on with us, which stressed me out. I don’t want to become what the others were this summer. I don’t want a fucked up situationship with you.”

“That’s not what we’re doing.”

“Then what are we doing?”

Seungmin stayed quiet, but Jeongin could feel how badly he wanted to speak. Their unsaid words were lucent in the air.

“I’m sorry I made you feel ignored,” Seungmin said finally. “You said that it was stupid, but it’s not. Both of those incidents were my fault, and I’m sorry. I was trying to keep my feelings to myself, but I unintentionally came off as aloof.”

“You’re forgiven,” Jeongin said, because it was the easiest part of that statement to respond to.

Seungmin continued. “I didn’t know the others noticed a change. I didn’t know you noticed either.”

“I don’t know that I did. I just came here because I wanted to try being honest and see where that got me.”

“Honest about what?”

Jeongin’s heart was beating hard in his chest. “You keep trying to make me put it into words, but I told you I can’t. Why don’t you try it?”

“I love you. You’re my best friend,” Seungmin said simply, but with so much gravity Jeongin felt like he was being sucked into a black hole. Never before had the word “friend” carried elephantine weight like this. But it wasn’t the wrong word. Seungmin always said what he meant. And Jeongin…agreed.

“You’re my best friend too,” Jeongin said, voice smaller as his confidence waned. “But sometimes I don’t think friends should be feeling the way I feel. It’s too much. It’s obsessive. It crosses a boundary of friendliness I don’t know how to come back from.”

It was so hard not to negate his feelings. He was so used to attaching an ‘or something’ or a ‘whatever’ to the end of his statements, dismissing his thoughts before they’d fully formed, but this couldn’t be a conversation of half statements. Jeongin would never get what he wanted if he couldn’t even say it out loud.

“I think friendliness is a subjective measurement,” Seungmin said. “I feel things about you that probably aren’t friendly either. But I don’t have a crush on you.”

“Like?”

“Like…the clothes.”

“The clothes.”

“The way you pick my clothes. I always feel better when I’m in outfits you pick for me.”

Jeongin looked Seungmin up and down. “I didn’t pick your clothes today.”

“That’s why I stole your hoodie.”

He had. He was wearing one of his black vintage hoodies, with a graphic on the front of an English band he’d never listened to. The ends of Seungmin’s hair brushed against the fabric where it had ridden up at the base of Seungmin’s shoulders, overgrown. Seungmin and Jeongin traded clothing all the time; at this point they had one combined closet that happened to be in two places. A memory forms in his head of a time a few weeks ago when Jeongin had worn one of Minho’s jackets just because it was the closest one and he needed to step out for a minute, and Seungmin had been weird about it.

“You could’ve borrowed one of my jackets if you needed one,” he’d said. “You picked them all out anyway.”

“It was just the closest one,” Jeongin had explained. “It’s not that I planned on stealing it. I needed something warm, and Minho doesn’t care if I borrow his things.”

Seungmin had dropped the topic, but Jeongin had taken off Felix’s jackets and traded it for Seungmin’s instead. It was true Minho didn’t really care if Jeongin stole his things. Jeongin was starting to realize, though, that Seungmin had cared. A lot.

Seungmin cared about Jeongin an awful lot.

“Why do you like it when I pick your clothes?”

The tips of Seungmin’s ears were turning red, but he answered smoothly enough, “I like it when you take care of me. It’s the same way I like it when you bring me things, or send me things, or when people go to you to ask about me, because they know that you know how I am. It’s just nice to feel known.”

That made sense. It was also very Seungmin, who was practical even in his intimacy. Jeongin was allowed to do things for Seungmin because Seungmin knew that Jeongin would do things the way Seungmin wanted them done in the first place. Phrased like that, it sounded impersonal, yet Jeongin could tell it was anything but.

“I like doing things for you because I like having your attention,” he admitted. “I know I pretend I don’t, but I do.”

“Don’t worry, we weren’t fooled,” Seungmin assured him. Jeongin graciously ignored him.

“I like buying you clothes and spending time with you because I like seeing you taken care of. Being your best friend isn’t a casual title to me. I want to be a good best friend, and I take the things we do as friends seriously. I feel like I want to be your only best friend, that I’m different from everyone else, because you’re different to me. I’m not friends with you the way I am with the others.”

Seungmin stayed silent, but Jeongin found he wasn’t worried. His nerves persisted, true, but then the nature of the conversation was nerve-wracking. The important thing is that he was having the conversation with Seungmin, and he believed, deep in his heart of hearts, that they would be able to sort this issue out one way or another. The stakes were low because Seungmin would never let anything irrevocable happen to them. It was easy to have hard conversations when you had that in mind.

After a few moments of silence, Seungmin said, “I’ve actually been thinking about this a lot, believe it or not.”

“For how long?”

“Since a couple of weeks ago. I was really worried.”

Yikes.

“I’m sorry for not noticing.”

“It’s okay. I didn’t want you to notice. I, um, didn’t know what to do with the conclusions I was coming to.” For the first time in the conversation, Seungmin began to look unsure. Jeongin’s anxiety decreased to make room for a sufficient amount of concern.

“Whatever you’re thinking can’t be that horrible.”

“It’s not horrible. It’s just…strange.”

“All of this is strange. What our bandmates are doing is strange.”

“But we’re not them.”

“I know you’ve convinced yourself that you’re a very normal and uninteresting person, but I can’t imagine anything you could say in the context of this situation that would scare me.”

Seungmin still looked hesitant, worrying his lip as he deliberated. On impulse, Jeongin reached out a hand and laced it together with Seungmin’s, squeezing tight.

“Just say it. I won’t get mad at you for feeling the way you feel.”

Seungmin swallowed. “I think I’ve said most of what I was actually thinking, but after I articulated that out, I didn’t really know what to do about it. I went online to some forums I used to use, back when I was figuring out my identity. I thought what I was experiencing was connected to being aromantic.”

Jeongin nodded, taking his time to digest the story Seungmin was telling. “Did you find anything.”

Seungmin again looked like he wanted to back out, but his grip tightened on Jeongin’s hand as he asked, "Have you heard of 'queerplatonic relationships'?"

Jeongin blinked. No, he hadn’t. And here Seungmin was back at it again with the foreign consonant clusters.  "No. I don't know why you would assume I’ve heard these highly specific English words."

"Okay, okay," Seungmin said, huffing impatiently. Jeongin thought it was a bit rude of Seungmin to be frustrated when he was the one who initiated this topic, but then Seungmin often came off as rude when he was overworking something, in his head or with his body, so Jeongin held his tongue.

"A queerplatonic relationship is like you're partners but you're not dating. Aromantic people use it sometimes, to describe the closeness they want to have with someone. It's like a relationship without romance being the main part."

"Isn't that just a friendship?"

Seungmin crossed his arms. "Like you said, I don’t think anything we’re doing right now falls under the barrier of traditional friendship. We're too obsessed with each other."

Which...true. Even separate from the hexagonal polycule in the dorm across the hall, Jeongin couldn't deny that Seungmin and him were perhaps a little more codependent than he'd like to admit. Maybe he did think of Seungmin as his number one priority, the same way a boyfriend would. And maybe he did revel in the attention Seungmin only showed to him, that was theirs all alone in the privacy of their rooms. And yes, they did hold hands and share clothes and play fight and sleep in the same bed more nights than Jeongin cared to keep track of and oh wow oh fuck they were dating weren't they? Platonically dating in everything but name.

"I guess not," Jeongin admitted. "So, you want this? With me?"

Seungmin hesitated for a moment, and Jeongin saw the slight hunch to his shoulders, like he was bracing for disappointment.

"I do. Or more like, I think we're already doing it, and I want to put a name on it."

It was so Seungmin of him. He preferred putting things in neat order. Jeongin tried to do the same but was often too inherently disorganized to manage. But here came Seungmin, with a pretty little box for them to put their feelings into, like a present all wrapped up for him Queerplatonic. He kind of liked the sound, at least, he liked it out of Seungmin’s mouth. He had no intention of trying to say it himself.

"Okay," he found himself saying. "I think you're right."

Relief washed over Seungmin's face. His posture eased.

"Okay," he echoed. "Good. I'm glad."

Jeongin brushed imaginary dust off Seungmin's shoulders, needing some kind of excuse to touch him. 

"So what does that make us now? Partners?"

"If you want."

Jeongin paused and looked up at Seungmin, making direct eye contact. "What do you want?"

"You’re my best friend. I don’t know what else I would call you.”

"You could call me baby," Jeongin offered. "You could call me sweetheart."

"I’d rather drink bleach."

Jeongin almost choked on his laughter. "Yeah, same," he said, still gasping. "It would make the others pressed, though."

Seungmin furrowed his brow. "I don't want to use this as a prop."

"We're not," Jeongin assured him. "You're my best friend and I’m yours. That's our thing. But they have been leaving biohazards all over the dorms for months now. If we called each other "baby" once or twice, I don't think they have the right to object."

Seungmin still looked unsure, and Jeongin sighed, straightening the lapels of his jacket before stepping away. "I want you to be happy, hyung. I want the group to survive and thrive, but I also want you to stop crucifying yourself."

"I’m not crucifying myself."

"Self-sabotage then? What's the phrase Chan-hyung got from one of his books?"

"Innie-"

"Don't do anything you don't wanna do, okay?" Jeongin said, knowing the conversation was devolving already. "But don't hold back because you think our hyungs don't want you to do it. Can I ask that of my one and only best friend?"

Seungmin's cheeks flushed a pretty red, and overwhelming fondness washed over Jeongin.

"Fine," he said. "Let's go get McDonald’s," he suggested. "Changbin takes too long to decide what to get and I’m starving."

When Seungmin and Jeongin came back, smiling with the wattage of a thousand suns, Jeongin was sure that Felix gave him a knowing glance as he dipped back into his room.

Life continued. Jeongin was beginning to accept that he was playing whack-a-mole with interpersonal issues in his life, and as such, his and Seungmin’s joint relationship with the polycule that made up the other three-quarters of their band waxed and waned with the tides. Sometimes everything was perfectly normal, sometimes it wasn’t, and then sometimes it was, but there was something off to it, a sense of overcompensating that drove Jeongin batty. As it turns out, Jeongin was a bit of a brat, and as resident brat he had extremely limited patience. The mess that was their bandmates truly wasn't his business, especially not now that it was all sorted and in the open, but it was becoming his business by virtue of none of them being able to shut the fuck up about it. It wasn't even that they were talking about it around Jeongin. Quite the opposite, actually. If Jeongin entered a room where they were discussing their relationship, the conversation would switch topics. Jeongin would knock on the door to the studio and wait a good sixty seconds for someone to answer the door, face flushed, acting as if they'd been innocently looking at tracks instead of sucking each other off on the sofa. One time he'd actually walked in on Felix getting sucked off on the sofa, and with the way he and Minho reacted you would've thought he interrupted them attempting human transmutation. The shame was also a new thing. They'd all long grown out of maintaining modesty around each other, so watching them scramble to cover themselves up felt like a slight in such an irrational way that he made himself mad just by experiencing it. They'd apologized profusely, and promised it wouldn't happen again, and he wanted to appreciate the consideration, but it didn't actually feel considerate. It felt very alienating and cliquey. It accentuated the distance between them in the worst way.

He had Seungmin, though. He had their own quiet getaways and rituals that the others weren't privy to. Whenever Seungmin would buy him a new jacket he saw at the store, or take him out for dinner, or smile that crescent smile when Jeongin held his hand, the burn went away for a while, satiated in the glow of Seungmin's affection. And for all he derided the idea of pet names, he did call Jeongin "his" more than once, and Jeongin felt himself flush every time despite himself. Jeongin didn't attempt anything with Seungmin when their members were around. It wasn't that he was consciously avoiding it; Seungmin was right that that kind of thing didn't come naturally to either of them. But Seungmin liked to think about things, turn them over and inside out before he decided they were alright. Being in some kind of official relationship had been Seungmin's idea, but he still had to get used to it, and figure out exactly how he wanted that to show to the others. Jeongin was fine with that. He was content to take everything at Seungmin's pace and let him make the first moves. It was enough to have Seungmin, to have something that was theirs and no one else's. He'd gotten so good, in fact, at not expecting any PDA from Seungmin that he was taken aback the first time it happened, in a rare moment of downtime for all of them.

Hyunjin was at their place again, bothering Felix and Minho while they cooked breakfast, and Jeongin was sitting just beyond the kitchen, picking idly at a book he'd been trying to read for months now. Sometimes he thought it was a miracle he graduated high school; aside from the idol stuff he was starting to suspect he was genuinely illiterate. He didn't hear Seungmin come up behind him, but he noticed his body slide into place beside him, peering curiously over his arm at the text.

"Morning, Innie" he said, and Jeongin's heart bloomed despite himself. "What are you reading?"

Jeongin shrugged. "Nothing interesting." He shut the book and set it aside, laying down his head on folded arms. "I’m bored."

"We could go out."

"I don't want to get dressed."

"You can go out in sweats. They won't arrest you."

Jeongin raised his head long enough to give Seungmin a withering glare. "As if I’d sacrifice my principles so easily."

Seungmin laughed, a bright easy sound. His hair was still damp from the shower and sticking in his eyes. Hyunjin said something in their direction, and Seungmin answered, which started a whole nother round of loud conversation that Jeongin didn't have the brainpower to engage with. Eventually, he pulled himself up and stood up from the barstool, stretching out his arms as he went.

"Where are you going?"

"To change," he said, dragging the book across the counter towards him. "I want to get those cherry cakes from that one cafe."

"Oh!" Felix said, waving a spatula around in excitement. "If you're going down there, can you get me orange scones?"

"Sure, hyung."

"Can you get me a latte?" Hyunjin asked, and Jeongin barely resisted the urge to roll his eyes.

"Yeah, sure, whatever."

Hyunjin scoffed, throwing his hands up dramatically. "You see how he talks to me? Not an ounce of respect."

"Can you bring my boots back with you when you come out?" Seungmin asked, ignoring Hyunjin completely.

Jeongin, already tired of the requests, smiled sickeningly sweet. "Of course, hyung. Anything for you."

Seungmin didn't miss a single beat when he responded, "Thank you so much, jagi."

Jeongin opened his mouth to respond but couldn't summon any words to mind. Seungmin's smile stretched even wider in giddy satisfaction, and Jeongin was sure he felt his ears smoking. He closed his lips and escaped down the hallway without another word.

And really, it was Jeongin that made it a big deal. Given the amount of homoerotic nonsense they were getting up to before they got together, the pet name was barely anything out of the ordinary. But it was Jeongin who had frozen in place, Jeongin who had blushed red all the way down to his neck. He didn't even know why he was so affected. Seungmin had called him that before, sparingly, just to see how it sounded on his tongue. And back then it had been fine. But something with the way he looked up at Jeongin, eyes burning, and the attention of their audience, how the pet name made him something of Seungmin's that Hyunjin and Felix and Minho couldn't have...

He looked in the mirror as he tried to style his hair, watching the red flush slowly fade from his cheeks, and dropped his face into his hands, groaning audibly. Stupid Seungmin and his stupid petty possessive streak. Jeongin put on his jeans and coat in an embarrassed, miserable silence. When he closed his door behind him, he only resisted for a moment before dipping into Seungmin's room and picking his brown boots out of his closet. He also grabbed Seungmin a coat, because the one by the door didn't match the shit he was currently wearing. They did this every day. It shouldn't get his heart pounding like this. Maybe Seungmin had a point when he was deliberating over acting like this around the others, because Jeongin hadn't thought it would be so difficult at all.

He reappeared in the kitchen and very determinedly didn't examine the vibes of the room. He thrust Seungmin's coat at him and dumped the shoes on the counter, ignoring Minho's scolding at shoes on the furniture.

"Let's go," he said. "It’ll close after six."

Seungmin set the coat on the counter and picked up the shoes to unlace them.

"I already have a coat by the door," he said, unnecessarily. He knew damn well why Jeongin brought him a different one. If he didn't know any better, he'd have thought Seungmin planned it all in advance just to embarrass him more.

"This one looks better," he said, trying his hardest to avoid elaboration.

Seungmin hummed, turning back to his shoes. Seungmin dressed quickly, checking his pockets for his keys and phone before shrugging on the blue jacket. It did match his outfit better, making the grays look more saturated and less dingy. Jeongin also realized, a bit belatedly, it was also one of the jackets Jeongin had bought for Seungmin recently. Jeongin had a feeling, though, that Jeongin had noticed right away

"So," he said, raising his voice so those in the kitchen, who had been not-looking at them as much as Jeongin had been not-looking back, could hear. "Orange scones for Felix, coffee for Hyunjin, hyung do you want anything?"

"No, I’m fine."

"Okay. Come on, jagi." Jeongin was quicker to react this time, only giving a split second of pause before zipping up his coat and following Seungmin out of the apartment. As soon as they were in the elevator going down, Jeongin let out another groan, sliding down the wall of the lift.

"And you said you didn't want to go showing it off to them."

"Was that showing off? I was just being polite."

The glare Jeongin gave must've been truly venomous, because Seungmin caved immediately.

"I’m sorry if it was too much. I've just been getting so sick of everyone else acting that way around us that it made me want to know what it felt like."

"And how did it feel?"

"It felt different. I don't know if that's better or worse."

Jeongin sighed and pushed himself off the wall. "Don't make yourself do things you don't wanna do. I already told you that you can call me whatever you want."

The elevator dinged and they stepped out into the lobby, waving at the security guard and pushing open onto the evening street.

The streets were empty for a Wednesday evening, but their street didn't have that much foot traffic regardless. They wouldn't live on it if it did. The cafe was three streets over, which was exactly close enough for it to be "nearby" and exactly far enough that it was a long enough walk to serve as a distraction. Seungmin was humming something under his breath, and their breath was just barely misting in the air. He'd originally wanted to go to the cafe to clear his head, and he was relieved to find it was working, the chill on his neck and cheeks taking away some of the static from his brain.

When they arrived at the cafe, Seungmin ordered and paid for everything, and handed Jeongin a cup of tea he didn't ask for as the man at the counter bagged up all the pastries. It seemed like way more than they'd originally set out to get, but Seungmin hadn't said what he'd wanted from the cafe, anyway, so he supposed that made sense. When the pastries were bagged, Seungmin picked up Hyunjin's flat white and the white bag and bid the cashier goodbye. Jeongin parroted him, reaction delayed from the drink in his mouth, and followed after him back onto the cold street.

After twenty minutes of relative peace, Jeongin trusted himself to open his mouth again.

"I liked it when you called me jagi," he admitted. Seungmin's steps only barely stuttered. "It just caught me off guard."

"Sorry. I should've told you before I did it."

"No, you shouldn't need to warn me just to say something nice to me. Now I know that that's a thing we're doing, so it's not going to shock me next time."

"Innie-yah, if this is too much-"

"It's not too much." Jeongin's voice was firm. "It's just unfamiliar. But we have to talk about it to make that feeling go away, so let's talk."

Seungmin shifted the bag in his arms. "We don't have to be gross or anything. But I liked calling you jagi in front of them. Not to sound like Chan, but it's nice to know you're mine."

Heat spread through Jeongin's body that was definitely not from the tea. "Yeah. I thought the same."

"Okay then." There was a smile in Seungmin's voice. "Then that's what I’ll call you."

"Do you want me to call you anything?"

"Mm. No. It wouldn't feel right for me. It's different." He side-eyed Jeongin over his mask. "You could stand to speak casually to me, though."

Jeongin swallowed. Their group had never maintained solid borders on speech registers. Chan and Felix didn't seem to care, and Changbin only seemed to care when they were on camera. Seungmin had always treated Jeongin as an equal, but it was so hardwired into him to speak respectfully that he'd never thought about slipping into banmal. Then again, Seungmin had never explicitly asked him to.

"Okay, Minnie-yah," he said, testing it out on his tongue. "I’ll try that." He looked over at Seungmin. "Good?"

Jeongin mercifully let Seungmin pretend that the tips of his ears were red from the cold and nothing else.

"Yeah," he said. "Good."

Jeongin hid his grin with another swig of tea.

At their apartment, Jeongin scanned them in, and then took the bag of food from Seungmin so he could get his keys out of his back pocket. Before they started down the hallway to their door, Seungmin caught Jeongin's arm.

"One more thing." he pulled his mask down, so Jeongin could see his whole face. "Do you want to kiss me around the others? Because I’ll probably go red the first time you try."

Jeongin would've choked if he was still sipping his drink. It wasn't a bizarre question- in fact, it was a perfectly rational next step. Dimly, he was starting to understand why it took the others so long to sort all this out. Having conversations like this was going to give him high blood pressure.

"I don't think so," he managed, struggling to get his thoughts straight. "Or I guess, I don't want to establish that as something I’m going to always want to do."

"It doesn't have to be forever. It can just be now."

Jeongin shook his head. "I can't. Sorry."

“Aish, why are you apologizing? I'm glad you were honest." He dropped Jeongin's arm and started down the hallway. "Let's go before Hyunjin's coffee gets cold."

"It's probably already cold," Jeongin said. And then on impulse. "You could kiss me, if you want."

Seungmin pivoted mid-step to look back at him, eyebrows raised. "Is that what you want me to do?"

Jeongin's hands squeezed on his paper cup. "I mean, I don't fantasize about it or anything. But it's like you said. I like it when...when you show I’m your person."

It came out a bit lamely, Jeongin's voice stilting awkwardly, but when he looked up, Seungmin was looking at him with nothing but fondness, and Jeongin was able to breathe again.

"Okay. Then I’ll kiss you sometimes."

"Not too much now," Jeongin warned. "Don't be annoying about it."

"Don't be gross, annoying, or disgusting," Seungmin rattled off. "You have so many rules for me."

Jeongin didn't dignify that with a response, just walked forward until he was shoulder to shoulder with Seungmin and they started down the hallway together. Right before the key hit the lock, a burst of panic shot through Jeongin, and he put his hand on Seungmin's wrist to stop him.

"What if they ask?" he whispered, hoping nobody was close to the door. "What do we say?"

"When they asked me before we left, I just said we're figuring things out. Which is the truth."

And well. Jeongin certainly didn't have a more concise explanation than that. He let go of Seungmin's hand, and the key entered the lock, and the door swung open on reality, back to the bright and loud environment of their apartment.

"Hey!" Felix said, waving from his spot on the couch. Looks like they'd finished cooking and were waiting for them, which was nice in a different way than everything else had been.

Hyun made grabby hands at Seungmin. "You guys took forever."

"It's far away," Seungmin said, passing the latte to Hyunjin which was miraculously not yet lukewarm. "Sorry that it isn't hot."

"No, it's great. Thank you, Minnie."

Jeongin laid the bag of food on the counter and downed the rest of his drink in one go, feeling the warm liquid burn its way down his throat and disperse throughout his body, dispelling the latent chill.

Minho appeared in the hallway, drawn out by the noise. He locked eyes with Jeongin, and for a moment, he was worried about what his hyung was going to say, but the moment passed within a single breath, and Minho turned into the living room to say hi to Seungmin. Jeongin put a hand over his heart and sagged, wiping imaginary sweat from his brow. It'll all get easier, he told himself. It's not too much. It's just unfamiliar. He threw the cup away and went back into the living room with the others. When Seungmin laced their fingers together as he argued with Hyunjin, Jeongin didn't pull away.

To his relief, it did get easier. Jeongin understood now why the others were so blatant with it; the gestures were automatic. Seungmin called him 'jagi" offhandedly, when he was trying to get his attention, and Jeongin found himself responding to it like it was his actual name. When Seungmin was heading out without him (as rare an occurrence as that was) he would kiss the top of Jeongin's head as he passed by, even when they were all gathered together in a group. Jeongin felt his members' eyes on them, even though they never said anything, and although the attention was itchy and uncomfortable it was also horribly gratifying. It was the same feeling he got when he dragged Seungmin away from a conversation with Chan or Changbin, saying it was important, and Seungmin always came, even if the excuse was clearly bullshit. Ok yeah, Jeongin was a little bit vindictive at times. He liked knowing he could have Seungmin whenever he wanted him. And he knew Seungmin liked being wanted by him. As soon as Jeongin's arm wrapped around him he melted into him like butter. To love and be loved- a constant push and pull.

And to be honest, they weren't even that annoying about it, at least not compared to the others, who Jeongin seriously worried sometimes about causing a PR incident on VLIVE. But Jeongin just wasn't an affectionate person, and for all his clinginess, neither was Seungmin. Their new closeness didn't change much of the dynamic with each other or the rest of the group, and it certainly didn't translate over to camera. Seungmin still bothered Minho and Jisung still hovered around Jeongin like a newly minted boy scout troop leader, and him, Seungmin and Felix were still babied equally by the others, or rather as much as Jeongin allowed. But at night, when all the others ran quadratic equations to figure out sleeping arrangements, Jeongin quietly slipped into Seungmin's room and climbed onto the bed with him, and they would watch some dumb video on YouTube together until their eyes were too tired to keep open. Jeongin and Seungmin, Jagi and Minnie. It was all so easy. Like he'd been doing it his whole life.

But of course, happiness dissipates once you acknowledge its presence. Maybe Minho watched Jeongin leave Seungmin's room in the morning one too many times, or maybe Felix had finally noticed that Seungmin hadn't picked out his own shoes and coat at all in the past three weeks, or maybe Changbin just sniffed it out in that way he always knew what was going on with them, like he was some kind of psychic whose powers only worked to determine whether his close friends were keeping secrets from him. Whoever or whatever it was, apparently it was enough of something to warrant Chan texting him one afternoon, asking him to come by the studio when he finished with vocal lessons.

"Do you need to record something?" Seungmin asked, reading the text over Jeongin's shoulder.

"No," Jeongin said. "I don't think it's about work."

"Ah. Why call just you though instead of both of us?"

"Isn't that how they do it on TV shows? You interrogate the pair separately to make sure their stories match up."

Just then, Seungmin's phone buzzed with a text from Minho, asking him to get lunch with him that day. Seungmin held up the phone for Jeongin to read, and Jeongin groaned, falling back on the bedroom floor.

"They're making it seem so serious," he whined. "What do they even think is happening?"

"I guess they think if it was something normal, we would've just told them already," Seungmin mused.

"Why do I have to get questioned by Chan-hyung? At least Minho-hyung will be nice to you."

Seungmin gave him the foulest imaginable look. "Don’t make me laugh. And Chan-hyung is nice. He's never yelled at you in your whole life."

"He'll make it too serious. You know how he gets when he's worried." he huffed, fingers tangling in the tassels of Seungmin's rug. "Do you think I can text back and ask Changbin-hyung to interrogate me instead?"

"Maybe. You'd probably hurt hyung's feelings though."

Jeongin groaned again, but Seungmin's laughter ended up making him laugh too, and his irritation took a backseat.

"Well, do we need to get our story straight?" he asked.

"There's nothing to get straight. Just tell the truth."

"And what's the truth?"

Seungmin sighed, long suffering, and rolled his eyes. "That we're together. You might even try telling Chan we're queerplatonic. He seems like he would know what that means."

"Ugh. Don't make me explain that whole thing."

"Okay then don't. Just say we're in a relationship and it's going fine. What else could he ask about?"

"Nothing, I guess."

"And if he tries to tell you it's not good for the group or something, tell me and I’ll come beat him up."

Jeongin laughed again, curling onto his side at the image of Seungmin storming into their recording book and punching Chan in the face. The idea was beyond comical. Even Chan wouldn't see it coming.

"Yeah, well, if Minho-hyung says something like that don't call me because I’m not beating anybody up.”

"Okay don't fight for our love then."

"Oh my god."

"I see how it is now. My own best friend, giving up on me so easily-"

"Seungmin!”

They went to vocal practice, then out for coffee, and then they meandered around for no particular reason than to put off the inevitable. Eventually, they reached the street where they had to split, and they stopped at a crossroads.

"It'll be fine," Seungmin said again.

"I’m not worried." Seungmin didn't comment on the obvious lie. He pressed a kiss to Jeongin's head, like he always did when he was leaving.

"I’ll see you at home." Then he walked in the direction of their dorm and Jeongin ducked into the subway to grab a train.

Chan was in his studio, staring at his monitor in familiar relief. He glanced up momentarily when Jeongin entered, waving to him absent-mindedly.

"Hey, Innie, come in, come in."

Jeongin shrugged off his coat and sat down on the couch, nervously turning his phone over in his hands.

Chan fiddled a bit more with his tracks before closing the program and turning around to face him. He looked tired, but he always did, so that wasn't anything new. Jeongin wondered sometimes if he might look young if he let himself get some sleep now and then.

"Iyen-ah," he greeted. "How was your lesson?"

"It was alright."

"Did you have a manager drive you here?"

"No. I took the train.”

"With Seungmin?"

"No, he went home. Minho-hyung called him."

Jeongin waited. He could small talk circles around Chan any day of the week, for as long as it took. He had all the time in the world.

Unsurprisingly, Chan caved easily. "I’m just going to get right into it, if that's alright."

"Go ahead."

"Lately, the members and I noticed that you and Seungmin-ah have been a lot closer than you were before."

"Have we?" it was instinctual to deflect, practically automatic. Chan's lips were a thin line. Jeongin didn't know if he was asking as his friend or as his senior.

"You don't have to say anything you don't want to say. I just thought I’d give you the opportunity to talk about it, if that's what you want to do."

"I don't really see why Seungmin and I have to explain ourselves when hyungs went months before sitting us all down."

Jeongin didn't know enough about the situation to know if that was too far, but Chan thankfully didn't look hurt, only a bit put out.

"I know. I'm still sorry about that. Back then, we didn't really know what we were trying to explain. It was difficult to sort out. You and Seungmin-ah seem much more put together than we were. That's why I thought maybe you were ready to share."

Jeongin spun his phone between his palms. He wanted to call Seungmin more than anything, surprised himself by how much he craved his reassurance. But he was an adult, and he was capable of articulating his own feelings without help. Fight for our love? Jeongin could do that. He wanted to do that.

"Have you heard of a queerplatonic relationship?" Jeongin asked, tongue twisting around foreign consonant clusters. Chan blinked, and Jeongin had exactly enough time for his head to spiral into mortification before Chan - shock of all shocks- nodded.

"I have in passing," he said. "Online."

"That's what we have. We're together, but not like you guys are together. It's not romantic. We're just...us." He trailed off lamely, unable to convey exactly what made up their whatever-the-fuck-it-was that they were doing. It made perfect sense in his mind, but he didn't have the language. Or maybe he did have it, but the words were locked deep inside him, and uncovering them would mean stripping away at fragile pieces of himself he wasn't willing to touch just yet.

"Okay," Chan said, and Jeongin could not for the life of him tell whether he actually understood or if he was just choosing to move on regardless. "And you're monogamous? It’s just you two?"

"Yes," Jeongin said.

"Right."

Chan was clearly gearing up to say something, but Jeongin had no clue what it was. The air in the studio was so thick Jeongin could almost see it.

"We just wanted to make sure that we weren't neglecting you again," Chan said, ever so delicately. "We know that for a while we weren't doing a good job of being considerate of you two. When we started seeing less of you, we worried that we pushed you away unintentionally."

Jeongin felt a sharp ache, a burning at the back of his throat.

"When you guys were being secretive, it was hard," he admitted, the minimization like fire in his mouth. Sure, after they'd had their group talk and Seungmin and him had had theirs, Jeongin was slowly processing his emotions. But before that, it had been torture. Jeongin couldn't remember feeling lonelier and more broken in his life, and he'd been on a JYPE survival show when he was sixteen. If he hadn't had Seungmin with him, he had a feeling he would've spiraled beyond his ability to drag himself out.

But Chan didn't need to know that. It wouldn't help anyone, and it couldn't be changed, and they'd already been through all of this before. All that mattered was how they were going to coexist now, in the arrangements they'd settled into.

"It wasn't fun to watch hyungs be so anxious around each other all that time, so I felt relieved when you all settled down and were happy again. That's why we didn't mind being on our own, even when we were hurt."

"That's the thing. I don't want you two to martyr yourselves for our sake. The last thing we want is for you guys to retreat into yourselves because you feel like you can't come to us anymore."

"We're not 'retreating into ourselves'," Jeongin said, the words falling out senselessly in his confusion. "We're just dating. Like you guys are just dating."

"I know. And that's fine-"

"Thanks for the approval."

Chan raised an eyebrow and Jeongin snapped his mouth shut. Maybe it had been too long since he'd had a talk with one of the older members. He'd forgotten how to watch his mouth.

"It's fine that you're dating." Chan continued. "If that's really what you want, then I’m happy for you. But I just wanted an open channel of communication, both ways, so we aren't hurting each other or leaving anybody out."

Frankly, Jeongin these days would almost prefer to be left out of things the other six were doing. He pinballed wildly between envying the others and their love for each other, and not wanting to be within a five-mile radius of any of their affectionate displays. He knew, though, that that was a petty and childish avoidance. Chan was trying to be gracious, to be non-intrusive, which Jeongin knew must be taking ever ounce of his self-control. Changbin must've helped him script out this conversation, because Jeongin had honestly pictured himself handcuffed to a table at this point.

"Sometimes we do feel left out,” Jeongin admitted, choosing his words with surgical precision. “But that’s not really something that can be helped. You guys are dating, and your relationship to each other is different than it is to us. Seungmin and I try to be respectful of that. As it is, you guys have your thing, and I have my thing with Seungmin. Everyone's getting what they need. And you guys aren't as obnoxious about it now as you were before."

An Oscar, perhaps even an Emmy, was warranted for the ease with which he said that statement. He should give up his idol career and go audition for dramas. Just to dispel any lingering suspicion, he raised a brow and asked teasingly,

"Are hyungs feeling left out from me and Seungminnie?"

Chan was unimpressed. "Jealous maybe, that you're nicer to each other than you are to us."

"I’m not nice to Seungmin."

"You are. That's what tipped me off, actually. You actually look like you enjoy his company these days."

Yikes. He knew he was becoming disgustingly fond of Seungmin as their relationship progressed, but he didn't know he was so obvious about it. Had Seungmin noticed? Did Seungmin want Jeongin to notice?

He must've looked alarmed, because Chan backtracked a bit.

“I wouldn't say you're lovey-dovey. But you seep into each other's space more. And you snap at him less."

"That's about as lovey-dovey as I can imagine getting," he murmured, and Chan flattened his mouth the way he did when he was holding back a laugh.

"It's cute. You're both cute. Can I ask...."

There was no point in putting up pretense now. "Ask what you want to know."

"How long have you been...platonically dating? Since promotions ended?"

"Six weeks,” he said. "It was just after our big group conversation." he flashed a bright smile, hoping some of his smugness was still entrenched. "Watching you all made us realize we should probably get our act together."

"Well at least something good came of all that."

Jeongin hesitated to say everyone's screaming and crying was worth the outcome, especially for him and Seungmin. At most it was a balm on the wound, a pleasant surprise he hadn't known he'd get. In quiet moments, he was almost thankful for his own asexuality, or else he'd have never found what he had now with Seungmin, but that was a thought he always put away quickly. In the ideal world he used to dream of, he could have both Seungmin and the others. He could feel love from all corners of his world, instead of shying away from areas of restricted access. I can’t have everything I want, Jeongin reminded himself. And lately, I don’t even know exactly what it is I want. Jeongin’s mouth started to feel uncomfortably dry.

"I won't give you the third degree," Chan was saying. "I’m pretty sure it's none of my business. But I’m happy you two are happy together."

And there was that raw feeling again, clawing at Jeongin's throat like a wild animal. He swallowed thickly. "Yeah. We're really happy."

"And I know you said that you think the way things are is the way they should be, but I’ll keep repeating that we want you to tell us if you feel neglected. We may not all be together in the same way, but we're still friends and we still love each other, and you two will always be part of that, okay?"

Jeongin nodded, not trusting himself to open his mouth. Of course they all loved each other. Jeongin knew that. The fact that they loved each other was the whole goddamn problem.

Chan must've sensed the rising tension, because he scooted back in his chair, signaling an end to the conversation.

"You can go now. Unless there's anything else you wanted to talk about?" His gaze was meaningful, always perceptive, but Jeongin was done baring his soul for the moment.

He wrestled his longing down far enough to say. "No, hyung. I'm alright. Thank you for checking on us."

"It’'s nothing. I'll see you at dance practice tomorrow?"

"Of course." Chan turned away fully then, giving Jeongin the privacy to leave without being watched like a hawk, and Jeongin stared at his back, wanting Chan to turn around and peel him open some more while at the same time wishing for nothing more than to get away. Jeongin obeyed the second urge, slipping out of the studio and making it all the way to a separate hallway before ducking into a bathroom and throwing cold water on his face, trying to take away the stinging in his eyes. The conversation had left him feeling icky, like he'd dislodged something deep inside him and it was coiling up, trying to escape. He needed to talk to Seungmin. He needed to confess for whatever it was his spirit thought he'd done wrong.

He took the quickest way home, not even surprised to see Seungmin wasn't back yet, and beelined for the shower. After spending a good twenty minutes under the stream, he felt a bit more in control of himself. He threw on a random t shirt and sweats from his closet and retreated back to Seungmin's room, his base of operations these days, and curled up in his sheets with his phone to wait for him to come back. He felt a bit pathetic, but that was the point of a relationship, wasn't it? You were allowed to be pathetic, and your partner would love you anyway.

He busied himself watching a drama as the sun moved across the sky outside. Around three pm, the door opened, and Seungmin stepped through, coat and boots in his hands. He saw Jeongin just as Jeongin saw him.

"Hey jagi," Seungmin said, and just that one word was enough to actually set the waterworks going. Seungmin blinked, shocked still, before dropping everything and rushing to the bed. He climbed on, hesitating at the far end until Jeongin nodded his permission to approach. Arms encircled Jeongin, not super tight, but present. Stable. He sucked in a few deep breaths, tried to stop the rest of his traitorous tears.

"What happened?" Seungmin asked. "Did Chan say something to you?"

Jeongin shook his head. "It was fine. He didn't do anything wrong."

"So, what happened?"

Jeongin took a shuddering breath, covering his face with his hands to hide the welling tears. "Are you ever upset that you're with me and not them?"

Jeongin didn't need to look up to see Seungmin's incredulity. "What? Of course not. What kind of a question is that?"

"Don't lie," Jeongin said, voice small. "We talk about how hard it is to watch them all the time. And that's not just a feeling that goes away, even if you know it can't be fixed. And after all that anguish, I don't want this to be some kind of...consolation prize. Or us just coping with our misery.

"That's not what this is." Seungmin's hold tightened on Jeongin. "You're not a consolation prize. I don't want them more than I love you. That's not how any of this works." Seungmin sighed. "I assume Chan brought up the whole situation from a few months ago. I feel bad that they're still thinking about it."

"In his defense, in a lot of ways it’s still happening, and I think he knows.” Jeongin sighed, wiping at his puffed up face. “He said it like he thought we were dating because we felt left out. Or like we didn't have anyone else."

"I don't think he meant it like that," Seungmin soothed. "And even if he did, we know that's not true. Fuck them if they're trying to feel sorry for us now."

Jeongin finally got his tear ducts back under control and wiped the last of his tears off his face.

"And I’m not with you because I didn't have anyone else. You're my person, remember? I already decided."

"I know," Jeongin said, drinking in the words, internalizing them. "I’m yours and you're mine."

"Exactly. They don't know anything about it. So don't worry too much about what hyung thinks."

It didn't rip out the seed of agony from his core. It didn't even put out all the fires currently rising inside him. But it was enough to cool the fever and bring him back to the present, to the reality where Seungmin was here and real and he loved Jeongin the same way Jeongin loved him. That was enough information for now. Everything else could wait.

Jeongin sucked in a deep breath, then let it out and took another. He hadn't even cried for that long, but he was already getting a headache. What a raw deal. What a horrible afternoon.

"I should've asked Changbin to interrogate me instead," he muttered miserably.

"I don't know if it would've been any better..."

"Did Minho-hyung make you cry?"

"Well, no, but-"

"So the chances right now are 50-50."

Seungmin swatted his head lightly, but he didn't pull away until Jeongin did, stretching out his limbs and trying to smooth out his hot, scrunched up face.

"Don’t say such dumb things," Seungmin said with no heat. "You're gonna make people think I don't treat you well. Then Minho-hyung will kill me for real."

"Did he say that?"

"He always did like you more than me," Seungmin grumbled, and it was enough to get a giggle out of Jeongin, the idea of Seungmin getting a shovel talk from their mutual friend.

"You know that's just an act. He adores you."

"Mm. I guess he does." Seungmin shrugged. "It's kind of nice to know, even if it hurts sometimes."

Jeongin disagreed so fundamentally he could spit, but he saw where Seungmin was coming from. It was nice to know that people wanted you, even if they wanted you in a way you couldn't reciprocate. The love and the longing were stored in different parts of the brain, it seemed.

"Enough about feelings," Jeongin declared, flopping back onto the bed. "I’m done with feelings for the day."

Seungmin laughed and slid down next to him, pulling the phone from Jeongin's hand and unlocking it. "What were you watching?"

"A dumb drama."

"Can I start it over?"

"The plot is so simple you don't even need the context."

And they turned the phone volume up loud enough that they couldn't hear the voices and laugher coming from the living room and waited for it all to pass by them once more.