Archive of Our Own

When Soonyoung, Wonwoo, Seokmin, and Minghao set out on their first off day in months, Soonyoung was determined to make the most of it. They'd finished promotions for the Love & Letter repackage and were two months away from the release of the Going Seventeen EP, the group getting one tiny, twelve hour break before preparations really amped up again. They had plans to shop for new clothes, eat some good food, and watch the latest blockbuster movie in an attempt to catch up on at least one aspect of pop culture that didn't have to do with music. In truth, Soonyoung wasn't super interested in any of those activities, not willing to spend his extremely sparse pocket money on clothes and not intrigued by any of the titles currently in the box office—sure, he was excited about the food, but he was always excited about food—but the other members wanted to do those things, and as a leader, he wanted to make sure they had a good time. 

Unfortunately, as a leader, he couldn't help but feel like he'd failed, just a bit, when they were sitting in a restaurant after just one quick walk down a few shopping streets, on the tail end of a full meal, and everyone already seemed ready to go back home.

“Are you sure?” Soonyoung asked. “You guys just... you don't want to go see the movie anymore? You just want to go home?”

“If we went to see a movie, I would just fall asleep,” Wonwoo said. He was across from Soonyoung in their restaurant booth, leaned back against the seat. 

“Nap,” Minghao said, his tone one of agreement. He was resting against Wonwoo’s shoulder, his eyes closed. 

“We can do anything on our off day, and you want to take a nap?” Soonyoung felt mildly incredulous, Wonwoo fixing him with a look.

“When was the last time we got to take a nap somewhere that wasn't the floor?” he asked back. “Extra sleep sounds great, honestly.”

Soonyoung looked over to Seokmin, who was the last person still moving; one of his cheeks was bulging with pork, but his chewing had gone slow. He seemed relatively checked out of their conversation, surprised when he noticed everyone else was looking at him. 

“Me?” he asked. They all nodded back. “Well… both sound good, but a nap is free.” 

Soonyoung couldn't really argue with that, and with everyone in agreement that going home was the better option, he relented. They made their way to the nearest bus stop and started back towards the dorm, Soonyoung pulling his phone out to send a text to Jihoon.

Jihoon and Mingyu were the only members that hadn’t made any plans for their free day, deciding that they wanted to stay at the dorm together and play house. Jihoon seemed to be looking forward to it, Mingyu near giddy, despite Soonyoung having no idea what they were going to do; if it was anything like the glimpses of them Soonyoung would catch when they’d woken up early and thought they had the dorm to themselves, all Jihoon would be doing was sitting on the kitchen counter, watching Mingyu cook, and getting kissed a lot. 

They probably wouldn't mind the intrusion, Soonyoung reasoned. They never seemed to. The most upset that Soonyoung had ever seen upon being interrupted was some pouting from Mingyu, and even that was usually resolved by Jihoon kissing his cheek, or holding his hand—or, on one memorable occasion, squeezing his ass—and for that, Soonyoung was grateful. That didn't mean they didn't complain in private, he supposed, but they kept it out of the group. The group had been Soonyoung's primary concern when Mingyu and Jihoon had decided they wanted to date, but they'd both shown, time and time again, that the group was their priority too. 

Besides, since all that the four of them were going to do was nap, it was highly likely that they would just say hello and shut themselves up in a bedroom, and then Mingyu and Jihoon could continue to pretend they were newlywed homeowners or whatever, without paying them any mind. 

To: Hoon-ah
We're on our way back early!! Just so you know~~~~

The journey was an easy one, Seokmin guessing about what some of the others could be doing, Soonyoung pretending to tune into their brainwaves to share that Seungkwan was currently dancing to Tell Me by Wonder Girls. The callback to One Fine Day Castaway had Wonwoo doing a shout of “Choi Seungcheol!” up the street that made all of them laugh, Minghao first through the door when they arrived. It was surprisingly quiet and empty, Soonyoung more than expecting Mingyu and Jihoon to be in the living room or the kitchen, with something sizzling on the stove. Instead, the place both looked and sounded dead. 

“Aren't Mingyu and Jihoon-hyung supposed to be here?” Seokmin asked, Soonyoung venturing further into the living room. 

“Maybe they went out,” Wonwoo suggested, Soonyoung turning and hushing his last few words, thinking that he heard some kind of quiet murmuring. Minghao's ears seemed to perk, hearing it too, making his way through the living room and towards the hallway. 

“Are they—” Soonyoung began, cutting himself off when he heard the sound again. He was just barely able to recognize the voice as Jihoon's when it pitched up into a sort of broken sob. Concern went through him in a jolt at the idea of Jihoon crying, moving to take a step forward, stopped as soon as he'd started by Wonwoo gripping hard at the back of his shirt. Wonwoo’s face was white, and it didn't take long to find out why. 

There were a few choked groans, a curse, then what was, unmistakably, a moan of Mingyu's name. Oh. Oh. Oh no.  

Mingyu and Jihoon were still home, and were very much taking advantage of the fact that no one else was supposed to be. Alarm bells began ringing in Soonyoung's head, but they still weren't loud enough to drown out the, the—god, why was it only Jihoon?—his fight or flight response kicking into immediate, panicked overdrive. Minghao picked his way across the messy living room on quick and quiet feet, his eyes wide.

“Jihoon-hyung and Mingyu-yah are in the bathroom and we need to leave.” 

He said it all as a single thought, connected and quick, his tone leaving no room for argument. Not that Soonyoung was planning, in any way, on arguing; Jihoon made a breathy sort of wanting sound and Soonyoung slammed his eyes closed—no, wait, no, they needed to be open, closed was so much worse somehow—grabbing tomato-faced Seokmin by the bicep and brute-forcing his way towards the shoe cubbies. Seokmin stumbled at the unexpected action but thankfully didn't fall, because the last thing in the world that Soonyoung wanted was for the couple to find out they were there. They all stuffed their feet into their shoes and Soonyoung led Wonwoo and Seokmin outside while Minghao, seeming to share his stealth sentiment, closed the door as quietly as he could behind them, the decrease in speed leaving one last moan ringing in their ears as they made their way onto the street in complete silence. 

One look at the shell-shocked expressions around him had Soonyoung realizing that potentially running into fans in their current state was not an ideal situation, steering them all into the first cafe he came across as a hiding spot. It took four entire minutes to pull orders out of the three of them, walking up to the counter on his own. He didn't think the barista recognized him but still gave her his best smile just in case, pulling out his phone when she turned away to get their drinks ready and navigating over to his chat with Jihoon. 

Thankfully, his message about returning home was still unread, and Soonyoung deleted it. He didn't want Jihoon to get worried about it and ask, because Soonyoung knew he wasn't good at lying to him. The message deleted bubble sat in the chat, staring at him, and Soonyoung quickly conjured up an easy excuse. 

Sorry, that was meant for my mom! Just ignore it ><~

When Soonyoung returned to the table, drinks in hand, Minghao, Seokmin, and Wonwoo didn't look much better than they had when he'd left. He slid the drinks around to their proper people before sitting down too. 

“Come on!” he insisted, when only Minghao moved to take his cup. “It's not that bad! Like, it was only Mingyu and Jihoon, right? It could have been so much worse. We could have walked in on like, President Sungsoo or something!”

He didn't know what kind of situation would make that possible but he did know, undoubtedly, that it would be worse. Wonwoo stared at him, Minghao muttering some unrecognizable Mandarin under his breath and rubbing at his face with his hands. 

“Plus, they've been together for six months,” he reasoned. “They've both come to practice with hickeys before. It's not like we don't know that they do… y'know. Stuff. We only heard Jihoonie anyway, Mingyu would have been—”

“Please stop talking,” Wonwoo managed out. Since Seokmin was still bright red and blushing for that long was probably bad for someone's health, Soonyoung decided to go ahead and stop talking. 

After a solid ten minutes, Minghao moved to take a sip of his drink, and the pink in Seokmin's cheeks finally began to fade. 

“What do we do?” Seokmin asked. His voice was hushed.

“Aside from keeping this a secret until we die?” Wonwoo asked back.

“I meant like… about going home.”

“Wonwoo-hyung is right though,” Minghao pointed out with a nod. “We can't tell them.” 

Soonyoung moved to agree, but thinking about it for a moment more had him pausing. Sure, he hadn’t wanted to be caught overhearing at the time, but the idea of keeping it a secret forever didn't really sit right. 

“You don't think they deserve to know?” 

“Do I think they deserve to be embarrassed for the rest of their lives?” Wonwoo’s voice was a little too biting, mean in the way it could sometimes get during arguments when he was too scared or anxious to properly consider how he might come across. Soonyoung didn't even think that they were arguing, but he had noticed that there was still a strange tension to the way Wonwoo was holding himself, so he didn't take it personally. “No, I don't.”

“The rest of their lives?” Soonyoung echoed, surprised. He couldn't imagine this mattering for more than a few weeks. One month, at most. Before he could say so, his phone went off. 

Why are you confusing me with your mom? You weird guy

The message was punctuated with a string of laughter—was that more than Jihoon would normally send?—and Soonyoung placed his phone on the table. 

“What?” Seokmin asked, flying into a panic. “Is that Woozi-hyung? Does he know that we heard?” 

“He doesn't know,” Soonyoung said, and Seokmin deflated just as quickly as he'd inflated, drooping towards the table with all the dramatics of a grounded hot air balloon. “It's just a response to something that I sent him earlier, but it probably means that it's safe to go back to the dorm now, if we want.”

The offer was met with a wall of silent hesitancy. Soonyoung understood the sentiment, but they'd also now missed the start time of that movie they'd planned on seeing, so unless someone came up with a fresh idea, going back to the dorm was the only easy option they had in front of them. 

With the final slurps of his tea to fortify him, Minghao got to his feet and valiantly declared that he wanted to go back to the dorm. His bravery caught Seokmin up too, but when they turned to Wonwoo, he declined. 

“Not, um.” Wonwoo gestured to his untouched drink. “Not yet. You don't have to wait for me, though.”

Wonwoo still seemed… weird. Making sure Wonwoo wasn't alone when something was wrong had become so instinctual that Soonyoung didn't even have to think about it; he was staying too.

“I'll message Woozi and let him know you guys are coming,” he said, picking his phone up. “That way… well, it should be fine.” 

Those words caused Seokmin to go pink-faced again, but he and Minghao still managed to make it out the door anyway.

To: Hoon-ah 
Because I just love you both sooooo much!
Wonwoo and I are going to be out a bit longer but Myungho and Dokyeommie wanted to go home, so they'll be there soon 

At first, all Jihoon sent back was a thumbs up. Then, as an afterthought: Mingyu is making black bean noodles. I'll tell him to make extra

That job now done, Soonyoung propped himself up onto his forearms, took a long drink of coffee through his straw, and met Wonwoo’s eyes. 

“Want to talk about what's wrong?”

Wonwoo didn't look away, tapping his fingers against the side of his cup. “Will it matter if I say no?"

That was better than him denying it outright, Soonyoung leaning back in his chair.

“Well, I mean, I can't make you,” he said. “But… was it overhearing? Was it really that weird?”

Wonwoo pursed his lips and looked around. Then, instead of answering, “Can we go on a walk?”

“Sure.”

Soonyoung drained the last of his coffee and pushed to stand, tossing the cup on his way out the door. Wonwoo was beside him, completely full drink in his hand, his head angled down. The way his glasses had slipped down his nose a little told Soonyoung that he wasn't actually looking through them, lost in thought, Soonyoung resisting the urge to push them up and instead deciding to bring him back in with a question. 

“Are you going to drink that?”

Wonwoo handed the coffee over wordlessly. They made it down two blocks, Soonyoung sipping noisily to keep Wonwoo next to him, before Wonwoo finally spoke.

“I think I'm homophobic.”

Soonyoung worked so hard not to do a spit-take that coffee very nearly came out of his nose. It burned so badly that he doubled over, tearing up, and while it sucked, Soonyoung was also grateful for how it kept him from laughing because a look at Wonwoo’s face told him that the words, as ridiculous as they were, hadn’t been a joke.

“You're not,” Soonyoung told him, once he could speak again. “That's literally impossible, what—”

“Hearing them made me feel sick,” Wonwoo responded, and well. Okay. 

“But…” It wasn't true. It just wasn't. “Has it ever bothered you before? I mean, you love—” The way he'd been about to say me caught him off guard, Soonyoung stuttering out “—them. You love them, right?”

“I—yeah, of course.” The answer was immediate, despite the visceral discomfort on Wonwoo’s face. “But what if I'm a hypocrite? What if I'm fine hearing them talk about it, but then when it's real, I…?” 

He rubbed his forearms with his opposite hands, drawing himself up and in. He was closing off, Soonyoung speaking quickly. 

“You've seen them kiss before, right? What about that?”

“That's fine.” 

“And what about a few weeks ago, when I kissed your cheek?”

“You completely missed, kissed my ear, and it was gross,” Wonwoo said, a sigh in his voice as his arms fell back to his sides. “But it was fine.” 

“Okay, see?” Soonyoung insisted. He was becoming more and more convinced, but while Wonwoo’s posture had relaxed a fraction, he didn't seem equally assuaged. “You've been so supportive the whole time too, you know? You're a good person, Wonwoo-yah.”

At least those words didn't make Wonwoo flinch like they used to. Instead, he made a small, frustrated sound.

“I just…”

“What?”

“I wish it made sense,” Wonwoo said. “When I think about it logically, I know that really… Really, I want them to, like, have sex if that's what they want to do, but actually thinking about it makes me—”

He cut himself off, upset, but Soonyoung had another thought.

“What about when Jeonghan-hyung makes sex jokes?” he asked. Wonwoo looked at him, and Soonyoung raised his eyebrows, making a small, prompting gesture. 

“Those are just jokes,” Wonwoo said with a shrug. “And I—yeah, sometimes it grosses me out, but it's not because of the gay part.”

“The gay part?” Soonyoung echoed.

“It's more, like, I don't know, the sex part,” Wonwoo admitted. “Sometimes, on off days, I just don't want to hear or think about that stuff.” 

That stuff.

“Maybe this is the same,” Soonyoung suggested. “Maybe it was the sex part.”

Soonyoung could see Wonwoo looking at him from the corner of his eye. He seemed surprised, but it wasn't the “you're ludicrous” expression Soonyoung was used to. It was more surprise that Soonyoung had come to a conclusion like that, and a hesitance, like he was watching for a reaction. Soonyoung took another noisy sip of the coffee and pretended not to notice, wanting Wonwoo to speak instead. 

“Maybe,” Wonwoo finally allotted.  

“It wasn't, like, gross to me but it's not like I loved hearing it either,” Soonyoung said. “It was a shock, right? It doesn't have to be an ‘off day’ to not want to overhear your friends.” 

Wonwoo nodded a little. 

“You really think that's all?” he asked. He did not seem convinced, so Soonyoung put some enthusiasm in his voice. 

“Yeah!” He bumped Wonwoo’s shoulder with his own. “I mean, it makes way more sense than you being not cool all of a sudden. Weren't you and S.Coups-hyung doing hip thrusts on each other for like five minutes at the end of practice last week? I think it's impossible to be homophobic after that.”

“That's just a dance move,” Wonwoo said. He sounded so, so matter-of-fact. “That doesn't have anything to do with sex.” 

Soonyoung's brain came to such an abrupt, complete stop that his body couldn't keep up, tripping over nothing and very nearly face-planting onto the road. He was able to catch himself by leaning forwards to get his feet under him but it was a very near thing, the coffee in his hand sloshing dangerously against the lid, a few droplets escaping out the straw hole.

“You—what?” 

“It's a dance move,” Wonwoo repeated, looking concerned now. “I mean—isn't it?”

“Yeah, I guess, but it—it's—” Soonyoung couldn't believe this. “Wonwoo-yah, it's literally called a thrust!”

Wonwoo wrinkled his nose. “Don't say thrust like that.”

Soonyoung felt like he was in a different dimension. “You can't honestly think it's not a sexy move.”

“It's not, though?” Wonwoo, somehow, was beginning to look more and more bewildered the longer Soonyoung gaped at him. “I mean, I know that it's supposed to, invoke like…” He trailed off, which Soonyoung was glad for—they were still in public after all— “but nobody actually thinks that it's hot, right? Because nobody looks hot when they're doing it. I've always thought that it kind of just looks silly.” He took in Soonyoung's unfiltered incredulity. “Are you kidding?”

“Are you?” Soonyoung asked. He had seen Wonwoo lie, and he'd seen Wonwoo tell the truth. Somehow, this was undoubtedly the latter. “It's masculine and sexy!” 

Wonwoo was studying him in a similar way, and seemed to reach a similar conclusion, because he made another face.

“Then why does Dino do them?”

That was… a fair question, admittedly. It was also very much not the point right now.

“What about body rolls?” Soonyoung asked instead. 

“What about body rolls?” Wonwoo asked back. 

“They're sexy!” Soonyoung exclaimed at him. He didn't know what planet Wonwoo lived on, but it didn't seem like it was very much fun. “Really?”

“They are?”

“Yes! Haven't you ever seen S.Coups-hyung staring at Jeonghan-hyung during dance practice?”

“I…” Wonwoo shrugged. “Yeah, but I always figured that was just…”

“Just that thing S.Coups-hyung does, where he's sometimes weird about Jeonghannie-hyung,” Soonyoung finished for him, and Wonwoo nodded. It was a phenomenon that Soonyoung had been noticing for a little while now, but so far Wonwoo and Minghao were the only other two that had picked up on anything similar. Junhui thought that they were just close—and sure, they were, but the energy was off—Jisoo hadn't seen anything that he was willing to share, Jihoon staunchly refused to speculate, and Mingyu had been too busy being the best boyfriend the world had ever seen to pay attention. Soonyoung hadn't brought it up to anyone else for fear of stressing out Seokmin and the younger ones. They needed a catchier name for it.

“Well Wonwoo-yah, S.Coups-hyung isn't just weird. Body rolls are definitely sexy.”

They stared at each other for a second. 

“You're not joking,” Wonwoo eventually said. He sounded surprised. “Does—does everybody think that?” 

“I mean, apparently not,” Soonyoung said, gesturing at Wonwoo. Wonwoo’s expression flattened. “Do you think anything is sexy, Wonwoo-yah?”

“Yes!” Wonwoo’s voice was instant and defensive, and his face started going red. “And it's not like I don't like body rolls, I think they look cool when they match with the music, but—”

“Like what? What's sexy to you?”

Wonwoo went a full shade darker, then took off towards the dorm at a quick clip. 

“Wait!” Soonyoung yelped, rushing after him.

“I don't want to talk about this with you anymore.”

“Just—are you embarrassed because you couldn't think of anything, or because what you are thinking is all kinky and weird?”

“What the fu—” 

“Hey, language!” That had Wonwoo turning to him again, exasperated. “Should I just name stuff, and you can say yes or no?”

“Soonyoung.” 

Real name, serious tone. Soonyoung had officially overstepped. 

“Sorry,” Soonyoung said. “Sorry. We can stop talking about it now.”

“Thank you.”

They started walking again at a considerably friendlier pace, Soonyoung sinking into thought. If moaning was gross and hip thrusts were silly, what did Wonwoo find sexy? No wonder he was confused.

“We can talk to the other members when we get home, if you're still uncomfortable though,” he said, because that was what they did as a group. Reluctance was immediate and strong on Wonwoo’s face, but he didn't disagree, so Soonyoung didn't push the issue. 

They took the long way home, Soonyoung noisily sucking up the last few sips of Wonwoo’s coffee as they stepped through the front door. The scene back home was as expected: Jihoon up on the kitchen counter and watching Mingyu's biceps as Mingyu washed some bowls in the sink, the two of them talking about something, quiet but equally engaged. Soonyoung poked his head in, gave Jihoon a wave, got a wave back, and glanced around. The other two were nowhere to be seen. 

“They're taking a nap, I think,” Jihoon said, as Mingyu turned off the water. That alerted Mingyu to their presence as well, a toothy grin appearing on his face as he dried the bowl in his hands.

“Hi, hyungs!” Then he crumpled a little. “Sorry, there isn't any left. We were hungry.” 

Wonwoo made a small noise behind him that thankfully only Soonyoung was close enough to hear, and Soonyoung couldn't help but look at the two of them more intently. They looked completely normal. When he stepped forwards to throw the coffee cup away Mingyu took advantage, squeezing Soonyoung up into a greeting hug that Jihoon just smiled at the both of them for. 

“That's alright,” Soonyoung told him. “We weren't expecting anything. Is there a plan for dinner yet?”

There wasn't, but Mingyu took it upon himself to message the others while Wonwoo said he was going to lie down. They found Minghao and Seokmin on a bed together, Seokmin playing a mobile game while Minghao did genuinely appear to be asleep. Wonwoo kicked Seokmin off the mattress and lied down next to Minghao, while Soonyoung pulled his phone out too. 

By the time dinner rolled around, the only one not yet home was Seungcheol, though he had already gotten on a bus back from Daegu. They ordered in and didn't bother waiting for him, a few of them laughing about the whining they were bound to receive before Jihoon revealed that he'd ordered food for Seungcheol too, so he wouldn't have to wait when he got back. A flood of cooing followed, Jihoon cursing all of them for a few moments before giving up and hiding his face in Mingyu's shoulder. Mingyu took advantage of the proximity and kissed the top of his head, and Jihoon didn't even frown at him in retaliation when he resurfaced. 

“That's really kind of you hyung,” Seokmin said, once regular chatter resumed. He sounded incredibly genuine; it was only due to sitting on Seokmin’s other side that Soonyoung was able to hear him.

“It's nothing,” Jihoon said with a shrug. Then, to further deflect, “You know how annoying Coups-hyung gets.”

“You're so thoughtful, though.” Seokmin was starting to blush. “Nobody else thought of that, but you did.”

Mingyu was frowning now, moving to open his mouth, just to be stilled by Jihoon putting a hand on his thigh. He was looking over Seokmin, his eyes narrowed.

“Are you feeling okay, Dokyeom-ah?” Jihoon asked. At that, Seokmin went pink, murmuring something about needing more sleep before shoveling an incredible amount of tofu into his mouth. Soonyoung put a hand on Seokmin’s forehead just in case, but his temperature seemed normal.

They all chatted about the various days they'd had, though Mingyu and Jihoon kept things vague, and Soonyoung's little group did too. They'd just barely started cleaning up when Seungcheol came home. He stumbled through the doorway and nearly banged his forehead against the frame, having tripped over some shoes.

“Jihoon! Your sneakers are trying to kill me!”

“You can't yell at Jihoonie!” Jeonghan called back, while Jihoon got up. “He bought you dinner!”

“Dinner?” Seungcheol asked, eyes big, all wrongdoing seemingly forgiven. Seokmin also got to his feet to throw away his trash and put a few of the extra banchan bowls they'd used for kimchi into the sink, Soonyoung giving him his best and biggest eyes to try to convince Seokmin to take his trash with him too. Jihoon slid behind them both to properly put his shoes away, placing a cursory, alerting hand on the small of Seokmin’s back as he passed. 

Seokmin dropped the bowls he was holding. The bottom most one dented the wood floor directly next to his foot and almost seemed to explode, chunks of white ceramic flying in all directions, cutting Seokmin’s pinky toe and the top of his foot, with one sizeable piece even nicking his shin. Kimchi juice went everywhere, everyone flinching and a few of them yelling, though Seokmin’s own shout of surprise seemed delayed.

“What happened?” Chan called from across the room.

“Everyone okay?” Jisoo asked. 

“I'm fine!” Seokmin’s voice was high. “I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I broke a bowl, I'm—”

“You're bleeding,” Mingyu cut in, hurrying to the kitchen for the first aid kit. Jihoon had turned back, clearly confused but still apologizing to Seokmin while Soonyoung got to his feet, wrapping one of Seokmin’s arms over his shoulder to help him limp out of the danger zone. 

“What happened?” Soonyoung asked, Seokmin just shrugging. He looked distraught, overwhelmed by the combination of collective group concern and guilt over the bowl and resulting mess, Soonyoung deciding not to ask again and just setting him on the floor out of the way, Mingyu reentering with a warm washcloth and some bandages. 

Soonyoung took them from him and set about patching Seokmin up, Seungcheol also coming over to ask after him while Mingyu and Junhui cleaned the rest of the mess. 

“I'm fine!” Seokmin insisted again. “They just slipped, that's all. I'm sorry, I'm okay.” 

It took a few repeats of that, but eventually the room settled and the group began cleaning up dinner in earnest. Soonyoung, however, wasn't buying it. He'd seen the moment Jihoon had touched Seokmin, the way Seokmin's body had stiffened, his eyes going wide. He desperately hoped that this wasn't Seokmin being weird about overhearing Mingyu and Jihoon, but also couldn't think of what else it could be. 

Just in case, he decided to do what he could to monopolize Seokmin’s time and attention for the rest of the evening. He rushed him through a shower and bundled him into bed, snuggling in on the mattress next to him and hoping that sleeping on it would help everyone feel less strange.

He didn't feel all that weird about it, he noticed. He wasn't sure why. It had been alarming in the moment, but it had also been unexpected; now, more than anything, he was more surprised by how Seokmin might be a bit of a prude. It just… sex just wasn't that taboo for him. Maybe because his sister was only one year older than him, and already had two kids? Everyone but Seungkwan, Hansol, and Chan were adults, and Seungkwan and Hansol would be twenty in just a few months. A couple that had been dating for as long as Jihoon and Mingyu had, clearly liked each other as much as Jihoon and Mingyu did, and not being intimate would be stranger to him, probably. 

That wasn't quite Wonwoo’s problem, though. It was about how the act itself made him feel, which Soonyoung didn't think he'd considered yet. He was a little worried, because he'd been… well, he'd been noticing a few things about himself, recently. That he might enjoy watching Taemin's Sherlock fan cams for more reasons than just admiring his dancing ability. That Dongho's biceps felt nice under his fingertips when the older man let him squeeze at them, and not just because of how novel the amount of muscle was. That he was prone to kissing the other members when he was drunk, purely because it was fun and it felt good. It felt good, felt nice, and the fact that the members were men did not seem to matter in the slightest. He wasn't ready to label it, but couldn’t deny it either, so… so how did this make him feel?

Honestly, just a bit icky. Just a bit like he'd invaded Mingyu and Jihoon's privacy. Thankfully, it wasn't really hot in any way; it was just a mistake, just something that happened that wasn't anybody's fault, and Soonyoung knew he would feel better when Jihoon and Mingyu knew about it too.

Resolving that he would tell them tomorrow, Soonyoung rolled closer to Seokmin under the sheets and fell asleep. 

He woke to Seokmin on his hands and knees over him on the mattress, staring down at him with wide eyes.

“Doky—?”

“I'm having a problem,” Seokmin whispered. He sounded well and truly panicked. Bleary, Soonyoung did what he could to look up and down Seokmin’s body. Aside from some morning wood—was it morning? The room was pretty dark—Seokmin looked completely fine. 

“Does your foot hurt? There are painkillers in the—”

“No, it…” 

Seokmin looked horribly conflicted for a moment, then let out a soft whine and collapsed. Directly on top of Soonyoung. Okay then. 

“Want to tell me about it?” Soonyoung prompted, when the following silence stretched a little too long. It was hard to tell without seeing it, but it felt like Seokmin shook his head. Soonyoung wasn't sure why Seokmin had woken him up, then. Again, there was only one explanation he could think of. “Is this about Jihoonie and—”

Seokmin got up and gave him a look wide-eyed enough to cut him off, but the words seemed to do something, because next thing Soonyoung knew Seokmin had him by the wrist and was dragging him to the bathroom. The weak natural light coming down the hallway told Soonyoung it was very early morning, unable to help mourning the sleep he wasn't getting as Seokmin closed the door behind them. 

They looked at each other for a moment. Seokmin looked away. Soonyoung sat down on the closed toilet lid. He knew from experience that Seokmin just needed to be worn down a bit by the silence in the room, so he waited.

Sure enough, after maybe thirty seconds: “Don't make fun of me.”

“I won't.”

Seokmin nodded a little.

“I had…” Seokmin covered his face with his hands, the next words coming out muffled. “I had a dream.”

“A bad dream?” Soonyoung asked, frowning.

“Yes!” Seokmin lifted his head. His eyes were big and shiny, dangerously close to tears as he struggled the words out. “I, it—it… It was what—okay. Um. It was what we, y'know, what we heard yesterday, right? It was that. Except hyung, he—except, hyung was saying—he was—I was in there instead, and he was saying my name because I—I was the one… the one… the one touching him and making him feel good, and—”

Seokmin was having such a hard time getting the words out that Soonyoung was getting worried about him, standing up and putting a hand on his shoulder.

“Dokyeom-ah—”

“I think I like guys.” Seokmin covered his face with his hands again. Soonyoung heard a sniffle. “I'm a terrible person.”

 Not great sentences to put next to each other. 

“You're not terrible,” Soonyoung said. It was something that he'd said to Seokmin many times over the years, though how well it landed usually depended pretty heavily on how tough their teachers had been that week. He couldn't tell how well it was doing here either though, because it had been said as a bit of a default, Soonyoung too distracted by what he'd just been told to put the proper amount of weight behind it. 

Seokmin had a wet dream. About Jihoon. And was telling Soonyoung about it. 

“But I am!” Seokmin’s eyes had gone properly watery now. “I can't have dreams like that about someone else's boyfriend! I can't want to kiss Woozi-hyung when he's dating Mingyu, it's so wrong, I'm so—”

“You want to kiss Woozi?” Soonyoung echoed, surprised. A wet dream was one thing, but that…

Seokmin’s lip began trembling too hard to answer, and Soonyoung stepped close, wrapping Seokmin up in a tight hug. They stood there for a while, Soonyoung doing a slight rock back and forth, shifting his center of balance from one foot to the other. The movement was something that always helped soothe Seokmin, Soonyoung making a mental note to ask Seokmin’s mom if he'd been rocked a lot as a baby. 

“I don't know,” Seokmin finally said, his voice quiet. As always, once Seokmin was able to get the initial issue into the open, talking was easier. “I'm not going to, of course I'm not going to, but I can't completely tell if… if him dating Mingyu is the only reason I wouldn't want to try.” 

“But either way, you do think he's hot and want to have sex with him.”

“Hyung!” Scandalized, Seokmin squirmed his way out of Soonyoung's embrace. His cheeks were hot. He wasn't denying it. “I told you not to make fun of me!”

“I'm being serious!” Soonyoung said, because those were just the facts of the matter, right? “Kyeom, dreams are weird sometimes. You didn’t ask for a dream like that to happen. As long as you don't be weird around Woozi and you don't try to act on it, I really think that it's okay, alright?” 

Seokmin looked Soonyoung in the eyes as he thought the words over. Then, finally, he nodded. 

“Okay.” He seemed to deflate a bit. “Thanks, hyung.”

“And hey, at least it was a helpful dream!” Soonyoung clapped him on the shoulder. “I didn't find out I thought guys were hot until I accidentally ran into JR-hyung in the locker room at the gym. He was completely naked and so sweaty that I had to change my shirt.” 

Seokmin paused where he was sniffling and wiping at his eyes, glancing up to give Soonyoung a look. 

“That's kind of gross, hyung.”

“Ah, you sound like Wonwoo,” Soonyoung responded with a sigh, wrapping an arm around Seokmin’s shoulders. “Come on, let's go back to bed.”

Unfortunately, a night of rest did not end up doing as much as Soonyoung hoped. Minghao was able to act casually, but Wonwoo and Seokmin were not. Wonwoo’s “weird” was unobtrusive enough that Soonyoung thought maybe only a few of the members noticed it, seeming like he was just a little distracted. 

Seokmin, meanwhile, was very clearly dealing with a newfound, full-blown, sexually-charged crush on Jihoon. The sweatier Jihoon became from dance practice the worse Seokmin got, messing up even the easiest moves, and doing a lot of stuttering whenever Jihoon tried to talk to him. 

“Does hyung need to go to the hospital?” Chan asked under his breath to Seungcheol and Soonyoung. Practice was winding down, the three of them watching as Jihoon put a hand on Seokmin’s chest to guide him through one of the steps he was having trouble with, the other hand on his shoulder to move it, his voice gentle and his eyes sharp. Seokmin’s knees buckled so badly that he nearly fell over. “He's been weird since yesterday, and he hasn't been this clumsy since his eardrum surgery.”

That was a very fair point. Soonyoung hadn't thought to ask Seokmin how his ear was doing. 

“I don't know,” Seungcheol said. He was frowning, his eyebrows furrowed in Seokmin's direction. “I was thinking of calling a group meeting.”

“No!” Soonyoung exclaimed quickly. They'd had daily group meetings for months after debut, and while they worked well, the leaders had been forced to reconsider after the main issue coming up in them was the self-aware observation that the squabbles they were taking time discussing likely would have been non-issues if the people involved had simply gotten more sleep. They'd been cut back to once a week now, and any meetings held on non-designated days were seen more like emergencies. Soonyoung wasn't sure how to fix this, but he was pretty positive that calling attention to it through an emergency meeting would definitely make it worse. 

Seuncheol's narrowed eyes fixed on Soonyoung. 

“You know what this is about,” he said. Soonyoung couldn't deny it, looking to Chan. Then Seungcheol looked at Chan too, and Chan pouted, able to tell that he was being asked to leave.

“Would saying it's official leader business make it better?” Soonyoung tried. 

“No,” Chan said, but he didn't try to fight it, sulking his way over to Jeonghan and wrapping an arm around his bicep. Once he was being sufficiently cooed over, Seungcheol turned to Soonyoung again.

“We can't not talk about this,” he said, his voice low. In a way, he was right, but…

“Not as a group,” Soonyoung said. “If Wonwoo and Dokyeom are fine with telling you then I am too, but it can't be in front of everyone. It really can't.” 

Seungcheol clearly didn't like the insistence on secrecy, but after a long look over Soonyoung's face, didn't try to argue. 

“What about Woozi?” he asked instead. “Does Mingyu need to know?” 

“I think so, but I really want to talk to them privately first,” Soonyoung said again. “It all happened yesterday, so I haven't really had the chance yet. I really just didn't think it would be a big deal.” 

Between his lips and his eyebrows, Seungcheol's face was one big scrunch.

“Okay,” he finally said, and Soonyoung relaxed. “So you, me, Wonwoo, and Dokyeom?”

“And Eisa,” Soonyoung told him. “And maybe Jeonghannie-hyung? I think he could help.” 

If Seungcheol was surprised by their private meeting turning into something with half of the group, he didn’t show it. Unfortunately, getting Jeonghan meant shooing Chan away again, who didn't even try to hide his displeasure. 

“Don't worry,” Jeonghan said soothingly, wrapping an arm around him. “If it's actually worth knowing, you know I'll just whisper it to you later.”

“Yeah,” Chan grumbled, pulling away. Clearly, he was more upset by the principle of the thing. Seungcheol, meanwhile, was gaping at Jeonghan. 

“That's how he keeps finding out things?” he asked, indignant. Jeonghan just gave Seungcheol an impish sort of smile, Soonyoung leaving the two of them to that and going to collect up the others. He snagged Wonwoo by his sweat-damp t-shirt, dragging him to where Seokmin and Minghao were sitting on the floor. 

“S.Coups-hyung wants to have a meeting,” he said, jerking his thumb in Seungcheol's direction. Seungcheol had Jeonghan pinned to the floor, one big bicep wrapped around his neck. Jeonghan looked more than happy to be there. Minghao's eyes went wide, and Seokmin paled. “I talked him out of a full group meeting, so really, you should be thanking me.” 

Once the room was devoid of everyone else, the six of them gathered in a circle on the floor. Wonwoo was bothering with a hangnail. Seokmin was already blushing. 

“Apparently, this is about why all of you are acting weird,” Jeonghan said, casual. He glanced around. “Does someone want to say what it is, or should I start guessing?”

Soonyoung kind of wanted to see if Jeonghan would be able to figure it out Knowing Bros style, but then Minghao spoke up. 

“It happened yesterday, on the free day,” he said. Seungcheol nodded. “We had stuff we planned, but decided we wanted to go home instead. We got home, and we heard Woozi-hyung and Mingyu.” 

“Heard them?” Seungcheol echoed, and Minghao looked at the others. 

“I… I don't…” 

Soonyoung didn't know if Minghao actually didn't know the words in Korean or if he just didn't want to say them, but he'd been brave thus far, so Soonyoung decided to bite the bullet for him.

“We accidentally overheard Mingyu and Woozi having sex. Or, we only heard Woozi actually, but—like, Mingyu was definitely there too. We could tell.” 

Seungcheol's eyes bugged out of his head. 

“They—they were—”

He looked at Jeonghan. Jeonghan looked back at him.

“What?” he asked. “The dorm was supposed to be empty, right?” He looked between the four of them. “Were they out on the couch or something?” 

Soonyoung shook his head. “Bathroom,” he said. “We didn't see anything. I sent them a message saying we'd be home, but it wasn't read by the time we got there.”

“It was warm under the door,” Minghao said. “And wet. They were probably in the shower before.”

Seungcheol looked at Jeonghan again. Jeonghan shrugged, and Seungcheol sighed. 

“I mean, Jeonghan is right,” he said. “They were at home, and had every reason to think that they were alone. They didn't do anything wrong. Neither did you guys but…” 

“We don't think they did anything wrong!” Soonyoung said quickly, looking around at the others. He got muted nods back. “It's not their fault, and we left as fast as we could, it's just…” 

He got more imploring then, looking at them again. 

“Just—awkward,” Minghao finally said. The other two stayed silent. Soonyoung really wanted them to share and thankfully, Seungcheol seemed to agree.

“Wonwoo-yah?” he prompted. Wonwoo was staring at the floor, pushing his glasses needlessly up his nose before speaking. 

“It… um… It made me feel sick. I really didn't like it, and I don't know why.”

A guarded sort of expression took over Seungcheol's face. Soonyoung wanted to reach across the circle and pinch him for it, but he also didn't want Wonwoo to see, so he stayed still. Jeonghan, though, was open and calm.

“Because it was Mingyu and Woozi, because it was gay, or because it was sex?” he asked. Surprise overtook Wonwoo’s features and he looked up, meeting Jeonghan's eyes. 

“Sex, I think,” he said. “What, do you know what's wrong with me?”

The question had very clearly been asked like a joke, but Jeonghan didn't laugh. Instead, he was looking at Wonwoo like Wonwoo had just told him a riddle that he'd heard before, but couldn't quite remember the answer to.

“Nothing is wrong with you, but I think we need to have a talk, one probable ace to another,” Jeonghan said. He got to his feet, wiping his hands needlessly on the front of his sweatpants before extending one out to Wonwoo. “This might be the worst conversation of your life, so we'll have it over there.” 

He jerked his thumb towards the far corner of the room. Wonwoo accepted Jeonghan's hand and got to his feet, all of them able to hear “So Wonwoo-yah, how often do you watch porn?” in Jeonghan's light, jovial tone before Seungcheol gave a loud clap of his hands.

“Okay!” he said, clearly wanting to give them some privacy. “Dokyeom-ah, what about you?”

“Me?” Seokmin asked back. His voice was high in panic, and he shot a quick look at Soonyoung. 

“Sorry, but you've been the most obvious,” Seungcheol told him. “You're the main reason for this conversation, so I think we have to know.” 

Seokmin was all red and fidgety, now glancing to the room’s corners to avoid looking at anyone.

“It's alright,” Soonyoung encouraged him. 

“Feel weird too?” Minghao asked. Seokmin did a scrunch-shrug “sort of” gesture, his next words very stop-and-start.

“I—kind of the opposite. I guess. Of Wonwoo-hyung.”

He gestured at them, Soonyoung looking over. Wonwoo was very pink in the face, but was listening with a wide-eyed earnesty to something that Jeonghan was explaining with an equal amount of care.

“It… wasn't gross?” Seungcheol guessed hesitantly. Seokmin nodded, gathered all of the air in his chest, and seemed to both steel himself and crumple all at once, the words leaving him like air from a balloon.

“I couldn’t stop thinking about it and then I had a sexy dream about Woozi-hyung and now I think that he's sexy and maybe I'm bisexual and I don't know what to do!”

It was all said very fast, his voice pitching higher with each word. Both Seungcheol and Minghao blinked at him. 

“Oh,” Seungcheol said. 

“Congrats!” Jonghan called out from his corner, offering a thumbs up. 

“It's terrible!” Seokmin cried, burying his face in his hands. “I know it's terrible. I feel so guilty.” 

“I said that you don't have to,” Soonyoung tried, but Seokmin just whined.

“You also said to be normal around Woozi-hyung and I just—I can't do it.” Seokmin’s words were muffled, rubbing at his pink cheeks before looking up. “Have you ever noticed how pretty his skin is? How pretty his hands are? That little mole under his eye?”

Soonyoung wanted to say yeah actually, of course he had, but didn't think that would be very helpful. 

“Seokmin, do you…” Seungcheol looked as though he was trying not to wince. “Do you actually have feelings for Woozi?”

That seemed to freeze Seokmin in his tracks. “What do you mean?” 

“Well…” Seungcheol tapped at the hard floor with his fingertips. “Thinking Woozi is an attractive guy is fine, and being bisexual is fine. I've got both of those things going on too. But like, do you want to date him?”

Seokmin frowned, thoughtful. 

“I don't know,” he finally said. “I know I love him, he's my hyung, but…”

“Are you upset that he's dating Mingyu?”

“No?”

“Do you want them to break up, so he can date you?”

“No!” Seokmin looked affronted, like Seungcheol had just accused him of something awful. “No, never! They're in love!”

“Good!” Seungcheol exclaimed, defensive. “No, it's good. It just—it seems like you might not have romantic feelings, right? Which is a good thing. That means it'll pass, so just…” He exhaled. “Just blow off steam the best you can, and you'll get over it soon.” 

“Blow off…” Seokmin trailed away, glancing over at Minghao. Minghao leaned back, raising an eyebrow, Seokmin looking at Soonyoung instead. Soonyoung put a hand on his shoulder. 

“Next time I'm drunk, I'll make out with you,” he promised, a manufactured solemnity in his voice that he hoped would make Seokmin laugh. Thankfully, Seokmin cracked a smile. 

“Not fair,” Jeonghan complained, he and Wonwoo on their way back over. “What happened? Who's blowing who off?” 

“I can kiss hyung too,” Soonyoung said—because it was fun to kiss Jeonghan, playful and slow and usually a little bit giggly—and Jeonghan blew a kiss at him. Seungcheol made a face in Jeonghan's direction. 

“Nobody’s doing anything, don't say it like that.” 

At that, Jeonghan just stuck his tongue out, sitting back down. Soonyoung looked at Wonwoo, overwhelmingly curious about what they'd discussed, but unsure if he should ask. It seemed private. 

“So, I'll just tell Mingyu and Woozi and then we'll be good, right?” he asked the group at large. All eyes turned to him, confused. 

“Tell them about what?”

“Overhearing…?”

“You can't.” Jeonghan sounded extremely adamant. “Hoshi-yah, that's a really bad idea.”

“But—what? Why?”

“Because it's Woozi,” Jeonghan said, like it was obvious. “He would be too embarrassed! Mingyu has to ask permission to kiss him on the cheek in front of us, and sometimes he says no. He would run off to Poland and we would never see him again, and then Seventeen would fall apart because we would have no music, and then Mingyu would never forgive himself for the perfectly selfless act of giving his boyfriend a blowjob—”

“Jeonghan!” Seungcheol yelped. 

“What?” Jeonghan asked back. “If you heard Woozi and not Mingyu, then Mingyu's mouth had to be full. It's the only thing that makes sense.”

Seungcheol pressed his knuckles into his forehead. Seokmin, Wonwoo, and Minghao looked ready to die. Soonyoung had no idea where in the world Poland even was. 

“Am I wrong?” Jeonghan challenged. 

“...no,” Seungcheol finally grumbled out. He lifted his head. “I agree with Jeonghan though, Hoshi. I think it might do more harm than good.” 

Soonyoung wasn't sure that he agreed, but he understood where they were coming from, so he nodded. 

“Okay.”

Due to a lack of actionable steps, there was no need to formulate and agree on a plan, so the meeting was declared over from there. The little group got off the floor with a round of groans, Soonyoung doing what he could to stand up first and extending an arm to Seokmin, truly feeling like Seokmin had just gone through a much more mortifying experience than everyone else. 

“Are you really gonna make out with me?” Seokmin asked, as Soonyoung yanked him up in that fun way that had his feet lifting off the floor. The action sent a sharp spike of pain through his shoulder, Soonyoung biting back a wince and releasing Seokmin’s hand to roll the joint in its socket a few times.

“Sure,” he said. He'd partially been joking, but he wouldn't say no. Seokmin seemed shocked by his nonchalance. “I mean, if you want. You pretended to kiss me all the time before we debuted, and honestly, it's not a ton different than the paper kiss game. But you could ask some of the other members instead, if you'd rather do that. It wouldn't hurt my feelings.”

Soonyoung had really only ever kissed the older members and Junhui, what with Jihoon being taken and Wonwoo only tolerating a few tiny face kisses before pushing him away. Seungcheol—Seungcheol was a good kisser, no other way to put it, but Soonyoung thought Seokmin might like Jisoo better, with how sweet and gentle he always was. Junhui might be Soonyoung's favorite though, just because he always seemed up for it. 

Seokmin looked flustered at the thought of asking anyone else—or, frankly, of kissing anyone at all—so Soonyoung gave him a light, so platonic it was downright familial, peck on the lips. 

“Hey!” Seokmin exclaimed, jerking away, his face bright with flustered laughter as he tried to hit at Soonyoung. Minghao, Seungcheol, and Jeonghan all burst out laughing and Soonyoung dashed away, running over to hide behind Wonwoo, who had missed it all in favor of typing on his phone. Seokmin didn't give chase, Seungcheol and Jeonghan falling into step with each other near the back of the group, Soonyoung eventually peering around Wonwoo’s body in an attempt to get a peek at his phone screen. It didn't work.

“Hi, Hoshi-yah.”

“Hi.” Soonyoung gave him a smile, moving to walk next to him. “How was the conversation with Jeonghan-hyung?”

“Good, I think.” Wonwoo was frowning a little, but the expression seemed more thoughtful than upset. “There's something called… Asexual? Apparently, it's a really individual experience or something, and that it mostly depends person to person, but a lot of it sounded relatable, so he gave me some stuff to search up and read about.”

“That's good. You love searching up things.” Soonyoung took another completely unsubtle look at Wonwoo’s phone and this time, Wonwoo tilted the screen to let him look. It was a vertical list of words and phrases that Soonyoung had never seen, his eyes catching on things like “demisexual” and “aromantic”, with “sex-repulsed” at the very bottom. He at least knew what those two individual words meant, though not what they meant when they were together, and pointed at it. “Is that what Jeonghan-hyung is?”

“No, that one was for me. He says he's more over here.” Wonwoo’s finger hovered between “demisexual” and “gray ace”, Soonyoung unsure which one he was pointing at. Maybe both. Soonyoung didn't recognize either of those terms. 

“Why didn't he say that, instead of saying that he's gay?” Soonyoung asked. “I thought he was just gay.” 

“He says that when he is attracted to people they're always guys, so ‘gay’ is easier. Less stuff to explain.”

In a way that did make sense, but it also had Soonyoung feeling a little left out, making the mental note to search up stuff too. For some reason, the unknown had him almost nervous about what he might find, wishing he could do it together with Wonwoo. But Wonwoo had always been able to read faster than him and besides, if it really was as individual as Jeonghan was saying, then he probably wouldn't appreciate Soonyoung tagging along. But Soonyoung typed the various words into his phone when he got home anyway, wanting to better understand his friends.

It was confusing. He didn't really relate to it at all—which, he discovered, made him a whole different term that was the opposite of asexual that he had also never heard. Had all of these words really just been here the whole time?

Some of the concepts on different web pages even seemed to contradict each other, but Soonyoung figured that that was the whole individual experience thing. He had learned through years of watching Wonwoo do various things on his laptop computer that just because something didn't make sense to him, that didn't mean it didn't make perfect sense to someone else. Now, at least, he had the terms he needed if he wanted to ask questions. Because all in all, nothing that he read changed anything about how he was going to interact with Wonwoo or Jeonghan; no reason not to love them just the same as he always had.

Seokmin, meanwhile, seemed like he might need some help, but Soonyoung wasn't sure what to do. It was clear by the end of the next day that Jihoon was definitely picking up on something, though he also seemed very confused as to what that could be; after two more days, the other shoe finally dropped. 

“Hey,” Jihoon called out, standing up at the front of the practice room, raising his voice to be heard over the scuffing of shoes and various side conversations. “Does anyone have any individual schedules they need to prepare for after this?”

He scanned the room once he'd asked his question, seeming to get back a satisfying amount of head shakes and negative responses. 

“Then can we have a quick talk before going home?”

The affirmative answers came with an air of hesitancy: emergency group meeting. Unfortunately, Soonyoung didn't think he could save Seokmin this time. They gathered in the center of the room, sprawled around and sweaty, everyone taking drinks or quickly checking their phones before giving Jihoon their full attention. 

“I didn't really want to do it this way, but everyone that I asked either didn't know or told me to talk to Dokyeom, and any time I tried to talk to Dokyeom he ran away from me,” Jihoon said. Some of them nodded, and some of them looked Seokmin’s way, who had gone bright red. Jihoon was sitting across from Seokmin, his legs crossed and his hands in his lap, making sure he had direct eye contact before speaking. “Dokyeom-ah, I'm not sure what I've done, but I'm sorry.” 

For a moment, everyone was quiet. Mingyu, who was sitting on Jihoon’s left and leaning his weight back on his wide-splayed hands, tilted to rest lightly against Jihoon’s shoulder. Seokmin brought his lips in between his teeth, chewing on the bottom one. 

“It’s—no, hyung. Please don’t apologize. It’s my fault, I… I’m sorry for being weird.” 

The words hung in the air as everyone, Soonyoung included, waited for him to continue. When he didn’t, Jihoon spoke again. 

“Is there something wrong?” he asked. That had Seokmin falling quiet, but the collective group attention eventually had his mouth opening. 

“I’m… figuring things out? Yeah.” He scratched the back of his head, wincing slightly. “I, lately… I'm pretty sure I’m bisexual.” 

“Oh!” Seungkwan exclaimed. A small smile was growing on Jisoo’s lips, Hansol making one of his patented surprised faces. “Really?”

Seokmin nodded, bashful. “So I’m trying, uh, to figure things out! That’s all.” He turned to Jihoon, big-eyed and apologetic. “I’m the one that’s sorry, hyung. I didn’t mean to bother you.” 

“What does that have to do with Wooz—ah!” Junhui’s question fell off into a pained noise when Minghao, who was sitting next to him, elbowed him hard in the ribs. Junhui turned to Minghao, confused and utterly disgruntled, and as a result, everyone looked at Minghao too. The increased attention was obviously the opposite of what Minghao had been going for, flushing pink.

“Yeah,” Chan said, his eyes narrowing in thought. “What does that have to do with Woozi-hyung?” 

Mingyu sat up. Seokmin, who had seemed to be in recovery from his embarrassment, turned red all over again. 

“I, um. Uh. Well,” he stammered. Part of Soonyoung thought that maybe Seungcheol ought to step in and save poor Seokmin, but Seungcheol, one leg outstretched in front of him, had his eyes fixed pointedly on the toe of his beat-up tennis shoe. “I had—I had this dream.”

Seungcheol's eyes went wide. Soonyoung's did too, looking to Seokmin. Honesty was usually the best policy, sure, but the truth, here? Now?

“And… in it, Woozi-hyung was…” Seokmin, then, seemed to catch onto the fact that maybe he should reconsider. His words went quick and light. “He was handsome! He was really handsome. Just like he is now!” 

He pointed to Jihoon. Jihoon looked a bit startled by it, and a bit like he thought Seokmin was making fun of him. Soonyoung was a staunch defender of Jihoon's sexiness, sure, but with how Jihoon was currently in sweat-soaked practice clothes and looked tired, Soonyoung couldn't really blame him for the surprise.

“He was handsome… In your dream,” Mingyu said. His voice didn't hold any hostility but Seokmin tensed up anyway, guilty.

“Yeah! And—and since then, I've kind of, you know. Been trying to work through these feelings.”

“Yeah.” Mingyu, now, did have a bit of a wary expression on his face. “I do know.”

“But it's fine, really!” Seokmin looked at Jihoon again. “I'm sorry, hyung.” 

“Oh,” Jihoon said dumbly, his full role in this now seemingly realized. A shift in his posture caused his shoulder to lift off of Mingyu's and as a result Mingyu pushed in close, Jihoon making a small sound in protest. “Mingyu—”

“Hyung.”

“Mingyu.” Then, when Mingyu pouted, “I am allowed to be more than one person’s bisexual awakening.” 

That was a hilarious new fun fact about Mingyu, but Mingyu did not seem to be embarrassed in the slightest, despite the poorly disguised snort of amusement from Jeonghan. It was Jihoon who was pink-faced, and when Mingyu opened his mouth to respond, he spoke again, soft.

“Can we talk about this later?” 

Mingyu nodded, though he also scooted in enough to hook his chin over Jihoon's shoulder, one of his hands coming to rest on Jihoon's hip. 

“I'm not—” Seokmin seemed a bit panicked. “I'm not going to do anything, and I don't have a crush on hyung, I promise. I'll just—I just won't look when he's sexy while dancing, and, and—you have a drop of sweat on your neck.” 

The observation seemed to come out of him on accident. Jihoon wiped at his neck with the collar of his shirt, his skin pink all the way up to his ears, while Mingyu stared in unfiltered disbelief and Seokmin’s jaw slammed closed, bringing his hand up to his mouth in shock.

“I'm sorry!” The exclamation was a downright miserable stage-whisper.

“It's fine, Dokyeom-ah.” While Jihoon was composed, the words seemed to be a slight internal struggle. “You're fine, and we're fine. It's fine.”

Mingyu didn't deny the words, but he didn't confirm them either, and the hand he had on the side of Jihoon's hip slid around his waist to rest against his stomach, palm-flat. Soonyoung figured that Jihoon knew the relationship well enough to speak for the both of them, but Seokmin squeaked out another apology anyway. 

“Okay,” Jihoon said, after a few measures of awkward beats. “I also wanted to let everyone know that the first draft of the title track that Bumzu-hyung and I are working on is almost done, so I'm going to record a guide tomorrow, and then I'm going to want some time with everyone at the studio for feedback. When would be a good time?” 

A few different numbers were thrown around before it was decided that they could get dinner delivered to the studio tomorrow, and discuss things while they ate. Jihoon opened the floor for questions or other points of discussion but nobody had anything that they wanted or needed to say, and the meeting was officially adjourned. 

Mingyu and Jihoon were out the door first, Mingyu practically dragging him by the hand, though Jihoon was letting him do so without complaint. The rest of them were slower to rise, Soonyoung making grabby hands at the surrounding members until Seungkwan took pity on him and helped him up. Soonyoung slung an arm around him in thanks. 

“You're sweaty,” Seungkwan complained, but he made no move to get away. 

“Was that okay?” Seokmin asked, clearly anxious. “I don't know if that was okay.” 

“He asked and you answered, Dokyeom-ah,” Jeonghan said, a mock gravity to his voice as he wrapped an arm around Seokmin’s waist. Then he got genuine. “If it needs to be talked about again, then it'll be talked about. But that's not what's important right now.”

“It's not?” Seokmin asked, lost. Jeonghan's arm around him turned into a hug, all of them moving as a group to the door. 

“Do you really think that you're bi?” Jeonghan asked back. Seokmin nodded, the action definitive, and Jeonghan grinned. “You know, I had a suspicion.” 

“Yah, what?” Seungcheol asked, while Jisoo’s smile was shrewd. 

“Because of anything real, or because you're just suspicious of everything?” he asked Jeonghan. Jeonghan's own grin went cheeky, responding by singing the slow start of some song that Soonyoung didn't recognize at first, the beginning lyrics in English. Jisoo recognized it immediately, Seungkwan gasping in Soonyoung's ear, and by the time they stepped out into the night air to start the trek home, all of the members of Vocal Unit were singing.

It was a song that the four of them had arranged and performed before the group had debuted, an acoustic arrangement of After School's hit song Because of You. Soonyoung was familiar with the five member arrangement that the unit had performed on their road-to-debut show 17 Project, but this specific version was even earlier, and they hadn't fully gender-swapped the entire song; the bridge hit and Seokmin sang out “I just wanna kiss you again, my boy!” loud and happy, a shining smile on his face. Jeonghan laughed, hugging him again. 

Wherever Mingyu and Jihoon ended up going, they weren't back by the time the rest of the group got in bed. Soonyoung didn't see either one of them until the next morning, early, Soonyoung ready to leave the bathroom and shuffle back into bed when Jihoon very nearly ran into him, opening the bathroom door without looking and clearly not expecting anyone else to be in there. His eyes were bleary and his hair was tousled and he was wearing a different pair of shorts and t-shirt than the day before so Soonyoung figured he must have gotten some sleep, but properly looking at him had him wondering how much.

“Hoon, you look like you got mauled by a dog.”

Jihoon looked down at himself, as though to encompass the hickeys littering his neck and collarbones. He had a bruise in the shape of a bite mark on the ulnar side of his right forearm. 

“I did,” he said.

Mingyu walked up then, also having just rolled out of bed and equally surprised to see Soonyoung. He was stumbling his way down the hall, Jihoon hurrying over to steady him as he tried to rub the sleep from his eyes. 

“You should go back to bed,” Jihoon murmured. Then, at Mingyu's head shake, “You're barely awake as it is, Minggu.”

“Promised I would help,” Mingyu mumbled back, sleep-slurred. “Some you can't reach.”

“I'll help, if Jihoonie wants,” Soonyoung offered. He wasn't entirely sure what he was signing up for, but he was already up, and felt leagues more awake than Mingyu looked. Jihoon looked back at Mingyu, cupping his face in both hands, the pads of his thumbs at the points of Mingyu's jaw and his fingertips laced lightly on the back of Mingyu's neck. 

“Last time, you took over an hour and spent half the time trying to convince me to keep some of them,” Jihoon reminded him. Mingyu grinned a little.

“And it worked. You kept two.”

At that, Jihoon rolled his eyes, pressed a chaste kiss to Mingyu's lips, and sent him back to bed. After confirming that Soonyoung's offer had been genuine Jihoon slipped into the bathroom with him and shut the door, getting a bag from the towel closet as he did. Unzipping it revealed two containers of concealer in different shades—Jihoon's and Mingyu's, Soonyoung assumed—as well as a small metal whisk and some setting powder. 

“You're prepared,” Soonyoung remarked, surprised, and Jihoon shrugged.

“Have to be, when you…” he trailed off, as though unsure of how he'd planned on finishing his sentence. 

“When you have a dog?” Soonyoung supplied. Jihoon went pink, but didn't disagree. “You don't… you don't usually look like this, do you?”

He swept an arm over Jihoon's body. Soonyoung had already spotted six bruises on him, and he hadn't even looked that hard. Was Jihoon always covered in hickeys, and just always cleaning them up? That seemed exhausting on Jihoon’s part, and inconsiderate on Mingyu's. 

“No, no.” Jihoon's answer was quick, and emphatic enough for Soonyoung to believe him. “No, this was just…”

“Because of Dokyeom?”

“Sort of, yeah.”

Soonyoung let out a long breath through bunched lips, watching as Jihoon took stock of himself in the mirror. 

“Anything on the back of my neck?” 

Soonyoung looked. “Yeah, one.” 

Jihoon handed the whisk to him. “Could you get it for me? Just press it in, then move in a circle motion. You can use a decent amount of pressure. It won't hurt.” 

Soonyoung did as he was told. He had to be instructed twice to press harder before getting the hang of it, but once he had the hickey on Jihoon’s pale skin began to dissipate. 

“Was it jealousy?” Soonyoung finally had to ask, unable to help his discomfort. “Does he not trust you?”

“He does,” Jihoon said. He sounded so sure, like he was reciting a fact, instead of inferring someone else's mental state. “He's been jealous before but it was over small, stupid stuff, so we didn't really talk about it. I asked him this time, and it isn't like…” Jihoon picked up his container of concealer, removing the lid and placing it on the sink. “He doesn't think anything is actually going to happen, because he believes Dokyeom and he trusts me, but any time I get hit on it reminds him of how single we come across to others, and that's what's tough for him.”

“Single?” Soonyoung echoed, confused. Mingyu was the most married nineteen year old Soonyoung had ever met. Jihoon nodded.

“We were broken up when we debuted, and then I ended up being…”

Jihoon seemed to struggle for a moment, and Soonyoung let out an amused breath.

“You're popular, Hoon-ah. You can say it.”

“Fine. I was popular.” Jihoon said the word like it had a weird aftertaste, a blush starting in his ears. “We were broken up and I was popular and he had to kind of, just, ‘sit and watch other people fall in love with me’, he said. Now that we're together again, he wishes there was a way for people to know, but we can't do something like that, so…” Jihoon swept an arm over his body. “I told him to do this.”

“Wait. You told him to?” Soonyoung echoed. Jihoon nodded once. His skin was now so red that what was left of the hickey was blending in, so Soonyoung considered himself finished and handed the whisk back. 

“Can you check below this ear? There should be something there, but it should be small,” Jihoon said, pointing, and Soonyoung gaped. 

“You directed him?” he asked. Knowing that the mauling had not only been allowed, but had been Jihoon-led, had Soonyoung's worry disappearing instantly. Sure enough, there was a small mark there. “Yeah. It's hard to see, though.”

“Okay. Leave it, he'll like that.” Jihoon balanced the whisk on the side of the sink, looking over himself again in reconsideration. He put a dot of concealer on the bruise on his forearm to mark it for erasing before shifting up one of the legs of his shorts to check something on his thigh. The way his body was angled made it pretty clear that he didn't want Soonyoung to see, but it was impossible to miss the bruising bite mark on the inside of Jihoon's thigh, both bigger and darker than the one on his arm.

“Probably should have put some ice on that,” Soonyoung said. So, his best friend was a freak. Eh, good for him. “It's kind of possessive, all of this.” 

Jihoon contemplated the words for a moment, then shrugged. 

“I guess, but… It's not just—y'know. He's mine, too.” 

Soonyoung was in the middle of admitting that yeah, fair enough, when another thought struck him.

“Wait. If you like it, and he likes it, then why…” He gestured to Jihoon’s hickey camouflage bag. “Why all of this?” 

“I don’t want to, I don’t know, give Dokyeommie a heart attack,” Jihoon said. 

“Yeah, it was a pretty sexual dream.” 

Jihoon wrinkled his nose. “Thanks. I was pretending I didn’t know that.” 

“But no, I meant like, in general,” Soonyoung clarified. “And even with the small things, like letting Mingyu be affectionate with you. Are you really that embarrassed?”

It was something that was a little hard to reconcile, because while Jihoon was a relatively private person, when he did talk about his relationship with Mingyu it was in such a simple, direct way that it would have made Soonyoung blush. It was more rare for him to do it, sure, but he wasn’t subtle. Jihoon didn’t answer for a moment, rubbing out one of the hickeys on the left side of his neck.

“We want to be safe,” he finally said. “There are cameras in the practice room a lot, right? And we don't know how much we can trust the staff members that aren’t Bumzu-hyung or Hyelim-ssaem.”

No one was technically out to Hyelim, but they were all pretty sure that she had some suspicions. As someone that trusted her completely, it was nice to hear that Jihoon trusted her too. 

“What about when we're in the dorm, and you know you're not going to leave the house all day?” Soonyoung challenged. “Come on, Jihoon-ah. Why can't your boyfriend kiss you?” 

Jihoon looked annoyed at Soonyoung for pressing, but Soonyoung didn't back down. And Jihoon likely knew he wouldn't, either. They were the only two in the group that truly matched each other when it came to tenacity; they'd had to stop using staring contests to decide after-practice chores because tears would start running before either of them would let themselves blink. Eventually though, Jihoon sighed. 

“Some of it is that, y'know, some things are precious and deserve to be private. Which, I know.” Keeping secrets was a bit of a foreign concept for them—”foreign” had Soonyoung's mind flashing to Poland again—and Jihoon, leaning in towards the mirror to whisk at another hickey, caught his expression. “But that's how we want it to be. Mingyu's said that he likes the balance we have. Some of it, though… You know how sometimes the stylists will give you an outfit, and when you put it on, you don't really want to wear it in front of all the fans?" 

Soonyoung didn't know where Jihoon was going with the seemingly sudden shift in topic, but did hold faith that his friend was going somewhere, and thought about it for a moment. 

Yeah." Soonyoung felt that on the whole, he'd been pretty lucky when it came to the company's styling decisions for him. Even so, on some days, some clothes just didn't look right, or feel right, or moved in a way that he knew would impact his performance. "Sometimes."

Jihoon nodded. "It's like that, I guess. Something about how you assume people are going to look at you feels weird, and it's uncomfortable, and then you do go onstage and things are fine. The comments are usually even positive, because all of the worry is a mental thing. But I don't... I don't like feeling like that, and that's usually how affectionate stuff in front of you guys makes me feel."

Soonyoung wanted to apologize, unable to help but feel that somehow, he should. Jihoon caught his eye, read his expression, and shook his head. 

"It's all me," he said. "And I'm working on it. Because I didn't... I didn't really come out for myself, because I wanted to, the way Jeonghan-hyung and Mingyu did. I waited until I was ready enough, but I did it because I felt like Mingyu should be with someone that was able to be confident about how they felt about him. He deserved that." He wasn't looking at Soonyoung as he spoke, gathering up a little more concealer onto his first two fingers and starting to spread it over the bruise on his arm, Soonyoung watching the purple skin disappear. "And if I hadn't met Mingyu, I don't think I would have ever come out to anyone. I also probably would hate myself a lot more, and those two things are probably related, but... it's hard to be authentic when the side of yourself that's the most true is someone who you know a lot of people think deserves to be cursed at. I needed someone to be brave for, and it still can be hard. That's all."

The words were difficult to hear, the casual “that's all” tacked on at the end not helping things. Soonyoung knew that Jihoon was happy now; Jihoon had told Soonyoung so, told him in a hesitant, stumbling sort of way, alongside the confession that the feeling was a new experience. It had broken Soonyoung's heart a bit, but since it was a step in a good direction, he tried to do his best not to mourn the past.

“Obviously, I love… I love where everything in my life has taken me, and that I'm here, and that I get to do this,” Jihoon continued. Soonyoung's immediate assumption was that the words referred to their jobs, being performers, because that was what the phrase usually meant; a gesture towards himself let Soonyoung know that Jihoon was being extremely literal, and that he was referring to this exact moment, and that he meant covering the hickeys and bites. That he had been given hickeys and bites to cover in the first place, probably. “But it's hard not to feel bad about not being able to, I don't know, fit into that normal, masculine… mold, I guess? The standard? And it still feels a little shameful to let anyone else see that I don't. Even though it was never meant for… for really anything about me.” 

He did another gesture, something up near his head, and whether he was talking about his round face, or his height, or something else entirely, Soonyoung didn't know. He supposed it didn't matter. 

“Well, clearly you don't need to,” he said, trying to lighten things. “Besides, you say you're a man, right? So you are.” 

He reached over, unable not to grin, and poked at the bruise on Jihoon’s inner thigh. Jihoon winced slightly at the tenderness of the skin, turning an incredibly bright red and swatting at Soonyoung, just to roll his eyes when Soonyoung laughed. 

It was an interesting point, though. It was something that Soonyoung hadn't really ever considered; the masculinity of it. Soonyoung felt that his own idea of what it meant to be a “man” was, in concept, pretty standard: things like bravery, and strength, and sexiness. Being in charge. Being confident. Looking good in a suit.

He'd never thought to question where that standard had come from though, or the things that were allowed to exist inside or outside of it. He had thought Jihoon was a girl when they first met, sure, but that was purely due to his fair skin and chin-length hair; he hadn't yet heard the blunt Busan satoori, hadn't known anything about his sexuality. However, Seungcheol was one of the first openly queer people he'd ever met, and he was one of the manliest people Soonyoung knew. He ticked all of Soonyoung's boxes, Soonyoung wondering, for the first time, if that was at least part of why the revelation of Seungcheol's bisexuality had been such a big surprise. 

Soonyoung wanted to be his version of a “man”. He wanted to be a person that could provide for his family, a person that was strong. He also wanted to be a person that Wonho of Monsta X might just heft over one shoulder like a sack full of rice. Did those two things really have to be mutually exclusive? Was it not, in a way, more brave to be someone that the world was against?

It was then that Mingyu opened the door. He had a bowl of washed grapes in one hand, giving a sheepish smile when Jihoon looked at him in surprise. 

“Couldn't go back to sleep. And I tried, I promise!” He sounded earnest, but with how they couldn't have been in the bathroom for more than fifteen minutes, he couldn't have tried all that hard. Then, his voice went soft. “I missed you.”

Jihoon had honey dripping from his eyes. Soonyoung felt that there wasn't really anything for him to help with anymore so he stole a grape, wished Jihoon luck, and left the bathroom. There was bound to be at least one open mattress with three members being up, but he didn't feel like searching for it; the first futon he came across with open space was Jisoo’s, climbing on and snuggling in. Jisoo stirred, his body relaxing immediately when he realized what was happening, his eyes falling closed.

“Hoshi-yah.” His voice was thick with sleep.

“Hi,” Soonyoung murmured. He let Jisoo get comfortable, feeling malleable, and before long, had become a very cozy little spoon. Jisoo was, he thought, very manly; he wasn't the most physically strong, and maybe he was more “pretty” than “rugged”, but he had been through things that Soonyoung could barely imagine, pushed through these hardships with pure determination and will. “I think you're one of the bravest people I've ever met.”

Jisoo was quiet for a moment. His palm was resting against Soonyoung's abdomen, and that felt like another manliness point, with how big they were. Soonyoung had always liked Jisoo’s hands. Jisoo hummed a little, the exhale a sleepy sigh. 

“I love you too,” he murmured back.

The next day was painfully awkward. Having his crush out in the open seemed, somehow, to make Seokmin even more embarrassed by it; he couldn't look Jihoon in the eye, had a hard time talking to him, and even had to pause practice once to leave the room. He took Soonyoung and Minghao with him and they just stood in the hallway together, Seokmin holding Soonyoung's hand and waiting for his heart palpations to slow down and his blush to fade. 

“You are a disaster,” Minghao remarked dryly, but he was petting Seokmin on the head. 

It left Jihoon awkward too, simply due to a complete loss on how to respond, and while Mingyu clearly wasn't pleased with the situation, he didn't actually say anything. Soonyoung got the feeling that Jihoon had asked him not to. 

The thing that seemed to help the most, however, was a game that was brought up by Seungkwan while they were in the company building outside Jihoon's studio, waiting for their lunch to be delivered. With how much Seokmin had talked about pretty girls in their earlier days, Seungkwan wanted to find out what type of men Seokmin was into. 

It was just a few prominent celebrities at first, Seungkwan asking and Seokmin responding, but when the others caught on, it became a full-blown discussion. A name would be given or picture pulled up, Seokmin would answer, and the rest of them would remark in agreement or outrage. It had Seokmin relaxing, laughing at their reactions, and thinking about people that were not his group mates—which Soonyoung assumed was the whole point of the thing—until Chan, like the little demon he was, pulled up a picture of Jeonghan.

“Now, why am I here?” Jeonghan complained.

To be fair, it was an extremely flattering, extremely pretty picture of Jeonghan, taken by a fan site during a fansign for Mansae promotions. Soonyoung wondered where Chan had gotten it from. Seokmin looked at the photo for a few moments. 

“Does that count?” he finally asked, his voice hesitant.

“Yes, having sex with me when I had long hair would still be gay,” Jeonghan deadpanned back. To Soonyoung's left, Seungcheol choked and very nearly spat a mouthful of water on the floor. 

“I kind of get what you mean, though,” Mingyu said. He was also considerably more relaxed, now that his boyfriend wasn't the topic of Seokmin’s attention. “Like, hyung looks super pretty obviously, but it's not really what I'm attracted to in guys, you know?”

“That didn't stop you on Halloween,” Jihoon muttered. It very much seemed like he'd meant to say the words quieter than he had, looking up and going red when the entire group turned to stare at him. Vampire Mingyu biting Harley Quinn Jeonghan's neck had been the talk of the Halloween costume fansign they'd done, but Soonyoung hadn't noticed anything from Jihoon about it. Granted, he and Mingyu hadn't been together and Jihoon hadn't been out at the time, so he hadn't known there was anything to notice, but still. 

“Was our Jihoonie jealous?” Jeonghan asked Jihoon. Jihoon didn't respond, but his tight lips and blush deepening were answer enough, Mingyu looking at him in surprise. Jeonghan cooed, loud and amused, seemingly delighted to have been an oblivious agent of chaos, and many of them laughed. He tucked some bob-length brown hair behind one ear, tilting his head. “You can bite my neck too, if you want. Make it fair.”

“Jihoon-hyung doesn't really like long hair,” Mingyu cut in, his tone short. 

“My hair isn't long now!” Jeonghan protested. That had the laughter continuing and Jihoon, now looking very much like a cat that was about to start hissing, went into his studio and kept the door closed to everyone until the food arrived. 

But then the food did arrive, and as they ate they were able to listen to the new group song that Jihoon and Beomju had made. It was called Boom Boom —just a placeholder title according to Jihoon, but Soonyoung knew that some version of it was going to stick—and it was incredible. Soonyoung loved it immediately, loved it on first listen, loved the mix of drums and horns and synths, loved the contrast of the soft bridge leading into the big final chorus, already knowing that the song was going to be an absolute blast to perform on stage. 

And, after the confirmation that despite it being a love song, it had been inspired by marinated crab and not Mingyu, the others loved it too. Apparently, the entire EP was progressing well; Hip Hop Unit's surprisingly sensitive unit song was in the finishing stages, Jihoon had made enough progress on the Vocal Unit ballad that listening to it had reportedly made Mingyu cry, and they had already decided as a group to write a song thanking fans for the warm reception of their first full album back in April. What Jihoon was having trouble with was the coupling song. 

“There's an old track that we haven't used yet,” Soonyoung pointed out, after a few minutes of discussion. “We recorded it as a group as practice, and I even choreographed to it.” He paused. “I think.” 

Jihoon's expression suggested that what Soonyoung was saying sounded vaguely familiar, promising to dig through his computer to find it. Soonyoung made a similar promise with his old choreography notebooks and they met up after practice a few days later, Soonyoung with the proper pages under one arm, the audio file on Jihoon’s phone. 

“I listened to it a few times already,” Jihoon prefaced. “There's some stuff that I want to change, so that'll probably change the choreography that you have, but we can look at that later. Want to hear it?” 

Soonyoung nodded eagerly, Jihoon holding up his phone. The file was titled Fast Pace.mp3, and as soon as the first few notes started, memories began to resurface. The beat was something that Jihoon had made during one of his tutoring sessions at Brand New Music, the group recording the song as practice in the booth, Soonyoung working out moves and formations as choreography practice, and everyone learning it to work on memorization and dancing. What they were listening to sounded a bit rusty now thanks to the years of experience under their belt, but Soonyoung was glad that they'd found the file with plans to polish it up, instead of letting it go to waste. 

It didn't take too long for the choreography to come back to them, Soonyoung surprised by how much of it he still liked. He collapsed on the floor next to Jihoon after a successful full run, giving his best friend a grin. 

“We are so cool.”

Jihoon poked him in the forehead for the comment, Soonyoung following through the action to lie onto his back, but he saw that Jihoon was grinning too.

“I mean it!” Soonyoung insisted. “Between this and Boom Boom, our next album is going to be out in no time.”

Jihoon gave a small nod. “Boom Boom hasn't been approved yet, but Bumzu-hyung is pretty confident in it. Then we can start recording…” A pause, then he sighed. “I hope Dokyeom is over whatever—whatever happened before recording starts, or his time in the booth is going to be impossible. I don't know… I mean, I've never had a dream like that so I guess I don't know what it's like, but it's been so sudden and out of nowhere.” 

He looked upset, but Soonyoung understood. It was a difficult thought, imagining how he would feel if Seokmin was suddenly unable to talk to him. Put simply, it sucked. He couldn't help but wonder if having full context would help, and his expression must have been too sympathetic because as soon as their eyes met, Jihoon's narrowed. 

“You know something,” he said. It wasn't a question; he was sure. “You know more about this and you haven't told me.”

“I—” 

“Hoshi.”

“You're right.” Soonyoung held up his hands. “You're right. I do know, I do, but I promised S.Coups-hyung and Jeonghan-hyung that I wouldn't tell you.”

“S.Coups-hyung and Jeonghan-hyung know too?”

“And a few other members.”

“Hoshi,” Jihoon said again, and Soonyoung sat up quickly.

“I wanted to tell you! I was even going to, but then they said it would be a bad idea and they might be right, so—”

“Hoshi.” Jihoon had gotten serious, and Soonyoung felt himself cave. He extended his pinky out to Jihoon. 

“I'll tell you, but you have to promise me something.” 

“What?” 

“You have to promise that you'll keep writing music for Seventeen, and that you'll never go to Poland. Unless we have a concert or something, I guess, and we're going as a group. But you can't just run away.”

Jihoon blinked at him. 

“Do I need to be worried?” he finally asked. Soonyoung shrugged. 

“I mean, I don’t think so, personally.”

Jihoon stared at Soonyoung's pinky finger for a few more moments but eventually his curiosity won out, slowly lifting his hand and entwining his pinky with Soonyoung's. Soonyoung kept a tight hold on it, letting out a breath. 

“Okay. So… Last week, when we all had our free day, Wonwoo, Dokyeom, Eisa, and I came home a little early.” 

Soonyoung didn't continue, but he didn't need to. It took about ten seconds for Jihoon to think back, then the understanding hit. The blush that overtook him was so bright that Soonyoung could very nearly feel the heat, Jihoon's entire body curling in on itself. He tried to take his pinky back but Soonyoung didn't let him, holding on tight, so all Jihoon had to cover his face was his free hand, and he buried his face in the crook of his elbow. 

“We were only there for like, three seconds,” Soonyoung said, because it did kind of look like Jihoon's soul was dying. “We left as soon as we realized what was going on. We heard almost nothing, I swear!”

“Oh my god.” Jihoon sounded almost hoarse, his voice low and quiet. “Fuck.” 

“I mean, you were a bit more enthusiastic, but yeah, pretty much.” 

That made Jihoon strike one leg out, fail to kick him, and instead squeeze his finger so hard that Soonyoung yelped, letting him go. Then Jihoon was free to curl in further, a ball of shame on the floor.

“Come on, Wooza! It's really not that big of a deal, right?”

“Not—not a big—” 

“We know you guys are doing it,” Soonyoung said, voice plain. “Honestly, finding out that Mingyu is actually good at it is a relief, because you deserve to have good sex.”

That, unfortunately, seemed to kill Jihoon. He just laid there, silent on the floor, for a full five minutes before Soonyoung nudged him with the toe of his shoe. 

“So, that's why Dokyeom had that dream?” Jihoon asked. Soonyoung nodded before realizing Jihoon couldn't see it.

“Yeah. Woke me up in the middle of the night to tell me, which was… Interesting.”

A quick, near-amused exhale left the pile of embarrassment that was Lee Jihoon, which was encouraging. Soonyoung nudged him again. 

“C'mon. I really think that it was kind of a good thing, actually.”

“Good?” 

“Yeah!” Soonyoung scooted around to where Jihoon's head was. “Dokyeommie is learning a lot about himself right now, right? And actually, Wonwoo is too—I'll let him tell you about that, but it seems really cool. We all learned that we need to actually get a response text before changing plans, I can relax because I know you're being taken care of, and you can relax too, because now that the most embarrassing thing in the world has happened to you, you pretty much don't need to worry about the rest of your life.”

That, thankfully, did make Jihoon laugh. He didn't lift his head but he did uncover it, still bright pink.

“I'm not going to run away,” he finally said. Soonyoung beamed—he knew it!—but then Jihoon pointed at him, stern. “And we are never talking about this again.”

Soonyoung's smile fell. “That's no fun.”

Jihoon more or less ignored him, getting to his feet and dusting himself off. 

“I'm excited about Fast Pace, and I do want to use it,” he said, Soonyoung immediately recognizing his “end of a meeting voice”. “I'll make the appropriate edits and we can regroup in a couple of days.”

“Where are you going?”

“I need to tell Mingyu.”

“Can I watch?” 

“No.”

Soonyoung spent the entire way back to the dorm trying to get Jihoon go let him watch anyway, saying that he respected their desire to keep their privacy, he really really did, but he was kind of a part of this already anyway and besides, it would be funny, it would be so, so funny, and…

Mingyu turned even more red than Jihoon.