Archive of Our Own

As soon as Seungcheol tears his knee, the planning starts. Not on his part; he’s too devastated at first, too aware of what this could mean for the years left in his idol career, for dancing again, for even being able to do more than hobble around. He’s not even thirty yet. What if he never runs again? And beyond the icy fear, the simple, body-deep preoccupation: it hurts. He hurts.

He doesn’t care about what it could mean for his military service. Not until he’s through his surgery and well into rehab. He thinks about it, of course; people want to talk to him about it. But it doesn’t matter, if he can’t be onstage with Seventeen again. Nothing will matter, if he can’t have that.

When it’s clear that he’ll get most of his mobility back – but that the pain will probably come with it, stay with it – that he’ll always have to be careful, that he’ll probably never be able to dance all the same choreography in just the same way, that modifications will have to be made – he’s grateful. It’s more than he hoped for. It’s also grindingly unfair. Sometimes he comes back from painful rehab sessions and screams into his pillow. He shuts Kkuma in the bathroom first, and when he lets her out she’s anxious, barking, and he has to bundle her on his lap and sink his nose into her white fleecy fur and tell her it’s okay, Daddy’s just upset. It’s okay. He’s telling himself that as much as her.

When he gets his grade five assessment — too fucked up to get through training; too likely to tear his ACL again — it’s not a triumph. No one in the middle of a career they love wants to put it all on hold, go away for eighteen months or more, come back out of the loop and too long out of the game. But it’s still like a mark on his forehead: unfit. Damaged goods, a dojang-stamp in bright red ink. Useless.

Jeonghan’s still healing from his ankle surgery when his assessment comes through, but he scrapes a grade four. The military will take him, push him through training, then find him a quiet social work post somewhere. In or near Seoul, Seungcheol hopes; close enough that he doesn’t have to move, though whether he’ll be able to keep dorming with Seungkwan is probably up for review. Idol schedules don’t work with a nine to five, but neither of them are the kind to live on their own and like it. Jeonghan and Seungkwan work well together; they both like to receive care and give care, more similar under the surface than they seem.

He can imagine Jeonghan doing well at a normal job. Making friends out of his colleagues, playing up to the older ones and down to the younger ones. Maybe they’ll put him in a school or a kindergarten. Seungcheol likes the thought of him like that, with children hanging off his thin arms and grabbing at his waist. He thinks that would make Jeonghan happy.

Jeonghan says, “As expected,” and laughs when he gets his results; an unserious hehe that’s basically punctuation, not a real indication of what he’s thinking or feeling. He’ll be out for twenty-one months. He’ll miss Soonyoung and Wonwoo leaving for their service, maybe Jihoon and Seokmin and Mingyu too. It’ll be years before they’re all back, and then they’ll lose the youngest three. It’ll be years more until they’re thirteen again.

One day Seventeen will be over, or dwindled down to something a bunch of old men pull together every year or so for the ajummas who loved them when they were all so much younger.

“I was almost hoping Yoon Jeonghan would get exempted, too,” one of the managers confesses to Seungcheol, and Seungcheol raises his eyebrows. “His injury history isn’t good, and his stamina isn’t so great. But he’s stronger than he looks.”

Seungcheol doesn’t say anything, and the guy drops it. He’s far from the only one to make such a comment.

“A stroke of luck,” another says to him about his class five at a planning meeting. “Better than we could have hoped, more spread and coverage once we start sending them in. A shame Yoon Jeonghan got a grade four...”

“What are they going to do, hire someone to hit me in the knees?” Jeonghan scoffs when Seungcheol relates this later over food. He’s a little flushed from his beer, his shirt unbuttoned maybe two buttons more than he’d allow if he was being filmed. “Maybe in the old days they could’ve gotten away with it, but there are too many cameras now. Someone would get footage. Ah, imagine the scandal! All over Dispatch and theqoo…”

-

Jeonghan doesn’t laugh when their CEO finally says, out loud, the thing that’s been silently circling all through these conversations, a shark fin breaching the water at last. It’s said to both of them, just the two of them, at a meeting that has to be in person: no, no point scheduling a video call! The CEO is making time to meet with them both, aren’t they fortunate?

“It will be a shame to lose you again, Jeonghan-ssi. With your injury history! I had hoped — well.”

He lets the pause do the work, pressing into the air the memory of the months Jeonghan sat out for first his elbow and then his ankle. Seungcheol’s own hiatuses hover, too; wasted time, lost time, time as thirteen he can’t get back.

The CEO’s eye moves from Jeonghan to him, and noticeably warms. “Choi Seungcheol is staying with us, of course, and will be back on official schedules very soon. Very fortunate, after such misfortune. Sometimes a little ill luck is what one needs, after all. A little time off, for more time gained.”

“I don’t know that Seungcheol-ah would consider it fortunate, CEO-nim,” Jeonghan says. “He’ll be dealing with that injury for the rest of his life, you know.”

“He’s recovered well. Don’t you agree, Seungcheol-ssi?”

Seungcheol grimaces. There’s not really any room to disagree, but Jeonghan is looking at him expectantly. He shrugs. “I’m working every day to progress further, sir.”

“And of course if Yoon Jeonghan needed to take more leave, we would support him. We know he would work just as hard to recover quickly,” the CEO says.

Jeonghan says, “Thank you, but I’m in good condition. I feel good.”

“You’re graded 4C. That’s right, isn’t it?”

They both tense.

In some ways, Seungcheol’s been braced for this since debut. Jeonghan’s carrier status hasn’t been mentioned since the first album did better than expected, even with the attention Jeonghan received every time the stylists wanted his hair long. Back then, it had just been a problem to be managed, something that could be toyed with to draw speculation but never publicly confirmed. It was the reason for the contraceptive injections Jeonghan had to get every six months, even though he said he didn’t need them. (“Side effects,” he read out once, his mouth twisted. “Bone thinning. Dizziness. Fatigue.”)

“Yes,” Jeonghan says quietly.

“Think about it,” the CEO says, and looks at him for a significant moment. Then he looks at Seungcheol. “A little time off, for more gained.”

Jeonghan’s hand finds his as they bow themselves out of the room, clamping hard. Seungcheol squeezes back. Once they’re in the elevator, Jeonghan lets go.

He shuts his eyes until the elevator has reached the parking level. Seungcheol drove, but Jeonghan took a company car. “I’ll drop you off,” Seungcheol tells him. “We can talk.”

-

“You should just take me home with you,” Jeonghan says as Yongsan’s lights blur by. “Get started on the CEO’s special project before your first schedule tomorrow.”

Seungcheol only needs to keep one hand on the wheel; he doesn’t need to grip it with both hands, to stare straight ahead, giving all his attention to the road. But he can’t look at Jeonghan.

“It probably wouldn’t take you that long to get it done,” Jeonghan continues. “I’m not quite thirty yet, after all. I should be grateful for CEO-nim’s consideration.”

His rage fills the car, shapeless, porous, leaking into everything it touches.

“It wasn’t my idea,” Seungcheol says. “Don’t be mad at me.”

“I’m not mad at you.”

“I don’t know why he called me in,” Seungcheol says, which is a mistake. He knows it as soon as he says it. Jeonghan laughs mirthlessly beside him.

“Oh, that’s not true.”

“Well, I’m not going to do it. Obviously.”

“Obviously,” Jeonghan echoes. He scoffs.

They don’t talk for most of the way back to Jeonghan’s dorm. They slide through Seoul; then the traffic stops, and they’re sitting silently together in an unmoving car. The traffic unsnarls; catches; unsnarls again.

“We didn’t understand what he was suggesting, that’s all. You’ll be okay when your enlistment date comes. You’ll go away and come back strong.”

Jeonghan doesn’t say anything. The squid-ink cloud of his emotions is still palpable, the rage less hot but the bitterness stronger, like tea left steeping too long. When Seungcheol pulls up at his building, he waits for the gate to open and drives up right to the door, to make sure Jeonghan gets inside safely.

He hasn’t said the right thing yet. “Jeonghan-ah…”

“Good night,” Jeonghan says.

-

He’s normal in their group chat. He’s fine at practice as they start to prepare for Incheon. He’s not even ignoring Seungcheol. Everything’s normal, for a week or so; then Jeonghan messages him.

I’m at your building
Let me in

It’s not that uncommon for him to show up and demand entrance, so Seungcheol runs a hand over his hair and goes to the door. Sometimes Jeonghan brings beer, or the food he wants Seungcheol to cook for them; this time he’s come empty-handed and from a schedule that’s left him still made up, shining dark grey on his eyelids. He’s licked away most of his lipgloss.

“I already ate,” Seungcheol informs him, though they both know if Jeonghan wants him to cook him something, he’ll cook Jeonghan something. He has some pork in the fridge, some greens in his crisper drawer… If Jeonghan needs something lighter, he can make juk.

Jeonghan shrugs off the oversized hoodie he’s wearing, one Seungcheol recognises as his own. No one is more likely to steal clothing than Yoon Jeonghan, to pick up whatever you’ve left lying around the studio and wear it like a trophy until you break and beg for its return, or simply give up and let him keep it.

Seungcheol’s still running his fridge and pantry contents under review when Kkuma comes yipping and scrambling around the corner, her claws clicking on the floor, and bails up.

“Defending her territory,” Jeonghan says, and snaps his fingers at her. He looks cold already in his thin white t-shirt. His hair is lank with product, whatever style it had been arranged in already brushed out and shaken away.

“She hates that.”

“No, she loves it,” Jeonghan says, snapping his fingers again, then crouching down to rub her head briskly. She yips louder. “Oh, she hates it.”

“Stop it,” Seungcheol says, though Kkuma’s even more loudly annoyed when he picks her up and escorts her into the guest room. She enjoys it, he thinks sometimes; yelling at Jeonghan, letting him provoke her into bad behaviour. It gives him a headache.

When he comes out, Jeonghan is still standing there. The neck of his t-shirt is deformed, like he’s tugged it out of shape.

“Come here,” he says, and Seungcheol, like always, obeys.

Jeonghan looks him up and down, from where their feet are almost touching up to Seungcheol’s confused and squinting face. Then he says, “Okay,” and kisses him, and Seungcheol’s brain turns to white noise.

It’s a brief, dry kiss. It catches the corner of his mouth; it’s there and then it’s gone.

“Don’t say anything,” Jeonghan says irritably. He leans in again, his hand coming up to grasp Seungcheol’s shoulder and hold him in place.

It’s better; a little less careful, less fragile. Jeonghan tilts his head into it, at the right angle this time, and now Seungcheol’s expecting it. He has a moment to wet his lips, to cup Jeonghan’s elbow, to lean in. He’s ready for the hesitant brush of Jeonghan’s mouth, but not for the sound Jeonghan makes in his throat when Seungcheol kisses him back. They kiss, pause to breathe; kiss again.

Jeonghan’s t-shirt is so thin that the warmth of his skin radiates through it. Seungcheol hasn’t seriously thought about kissing him in years. Seungcheol has been thinking seriously about kissing him for years. Both of these things are true.

“Okay,” Jeonghan says. “That’s enough for now.”

Seungcheol rubs his hand over his mouth. “What was that?”

Jeonghan shrugs. He tugs on the neck of his shirt. “So are we doing this?”

“Doing what?”

“You know.” Jeonghan makes a weird shape with his mouth and cocks his head.

Then he pulls his shirt off, and his body comes into view; nothing Seungcheol hasn’t seen before, but nothing Jeonghan normally likes to show off, either. His narrow waist, the distinct grooves of his ribs, the softness at his navel he claims to hate. His sharp collarbone and the curves of his shoulders. His sweatpants are cinched tightly around his hips, the knotted cord barely holding them up.

“Jeonghan-ah,” Seungcheol says helplessly, and Jeonghan takes his hand and puts it on his chest. His heart is beating frantically under it.

Seungcheol doesn’t know what to do.

He’s being given a kind of permission: to touch, maybe to run his hands over Jeonghan’s forbidden skin, even to put his mouth on him, to rub his lips and his face against Jeonghan’s belly and his chest, to kiss and bite. He’s never wanted to eat anyone alive like he wants Jeonghan, never; all his life.

Jeonghan shivers. His nipples have prickled. Seungcheol’s hand is still cupping one of them like a dead fish, not moving. He’s never been aware before of how many nerve endings he has in his palm, how much he can feel with a few bare inches of his skin.

“Come on,” Jeonghan says, and the spell breaks.

He lets Seungcheol run his hands all over him: up his back, over his shoulders, down his arms. When Seungcheol kisses him, he’s horribly aware of the open curtains, but he’s unwilling to stop touching Jeonghan long enough to do anything about it. If he lets go, if he breaks contact, this will stop. He knows that, because he knows Jeonghan in every way except this way.

Jeonghan’s hands settle around his waist and then come up, tentatively, to slide along his biceps and squeeze. They tug at Seungcheol’s jacket, push at his shirt; shove the jacket from his shoulders and start on his pants.

“Not here,” Seungcheol says.

“In your room, then,” Jeonghan says, and pushes him. “Come on.”

-

Seungcheol’s not the tidiest person. His bed isn’t made, but the sheets are clean – he thinks. If he’d had any idea of anyone seeing this, of bringing anyone back to his room, he would have cleaned up. He would have lit a candle, and straightened the comforter, and done something about the open suitcase still spilling its entrails over the floor. Sometimes he doesn’t bother unpacking when they’re just leaving again soon, and just takes what he needs out as he needs it.

Jeonghan doesn’t seem to care, but Jeonghan likes it when people show they took pains on his behalf. He’d laugh at the candle and the perfectly presented room, but he’d be pleased anyway.

“These arms,” he murmurs when Seungcheol finally takes his shirt off. “So meaty.”

“Don’t,” Seungcheol says, squirming, so Jeonghan, to be annoying, says “So meaty, ah,” again and again, pinching his biceps in punctuation like a grandmother with a fat grandson. It makes his erection feel horribly inappropriate, but getting hard around Jeonghan has always been inappropriate.

It was wrong when he was seventeen and Jeonghan was seventeen, a skinny boy with a thick helmet of black hair cut straight across his forehead; it was wrong when they were nineteen and Jeonghan was beautiful, his gleaming hair streaming past his shoulders, and every cameraman and new manager and even members of rival groups twisted their heads to stare resentfully after him. It was wrong last month, and it was wrong last week, when Jeonghan sat in his car and said it probably wouldn’t take you that long.

“Jeonghan –”

“Pants,” Jeonghan says, and laughs when Seungcheol trips getting out of them. His own sweatpants, untied, fall down his thighs, which are skinny and hairless. He’s not all the way hard.

He shrugs Seungcheol’s hand on his dick away and slides his underwear off, and then he’s standing naked in Seungcheol’s bedroom, his dick pink and glistening a little. “I don’t need that,” he says, when Seungcheol tries to touch him again.

“I want to,” Seungcheol protests, but Jeonghan clicks his tongue at him like he’s Kkuma and pushes him onto his back on his bed.

He’s okay with touching Seungcheol; he slides his hand up and down his cock, one, twice, assessing him for readiness, then throws a leg over his lap and straddles him. He fumbles between his own legs, takes hold of Seungcheol’s dick again and moves it to where he wants it.

The head of Seungcheol’s dick pops into his cunt and Jeonghan says, “Ah,” shocked.

Seungcheol gasps.

Jeonghan’s trembling, arched over him; he’s wet, a little, but when he starts to move, it’s clear that’s not going to be enough. His hips move in careful little flinches, not letting Seungcheol more than halfway inside him; when he overestimates and sinks lower than he means to, he makes a sharp sound.

His nipples are too far from Seungcheol’s mouth to reach. He wants to thrust up, to take Jeonghan by the hips and pull him down onto him, but he doesn’t dare. Jeonghan’s still not taking him all the way and doesn’t seem to intend to.

It’s the hardest thing Seungcheol’s ever done, staying still and letting Jeonghan fuck him.

He’s never fucked anyone without a condom before, hasn’t fucked anyone in months; he’s not sure if it’s the lack of that barrier or the knowledge that it’s Jeonghan that makes everything feel so intense. He comes suddenly, shamefully, a pulsing that seems to throb all the way through him and beat in his throat and his ears.

“That’s right,” Jeonghan murmurs.

Seungcheol pants, his face screwing up with feeling, and Jeonghan climbs off him gingerly and rolls onto his back. His knees are stained pink from kneeling on the mattress, bent now, still open. “Hand me that pillow,” he says, and when Seungcheol has enough strength to find it behind his head and toss it towards him, Jeonghan squirms, pushing it under his hips.

“Jeonghan-ah –”

“Shh,” Jeonghan says.

-

Seungcheol must drowse a little then, without meaning to. When he wakes up Jeonghan is still in bed with him. He’s wearing a t-shirt; not the one he threw off in Seungcheol’s living room, but one he must have found in the suitcase, one of Seungcheol’s favourites. He’s pulled the sheets and the comforter up over them, and now he’s curled onto his side, asleep.

A wave of mingled fondness and helplessness rears up in him; folds over and sweeps him down into sleep again.

-

It’s still dark when Jeonghan wakes him up properly, shaking his shoulder. “Come on,” he says, and then his hand is around Seungcheol’s dick, coaxing him the rest of the way hard. It’s wet like he licked it first, and Seungcheol is seasick and confused, pleased, arching into it and groaning sleepily into the curve of Jeonghan’s shoulder as Jeonghan’s hand works between them.

Then Jeonghan shifts, lifting his knee up to rest on Seungcheol’s hip, and Seungcheol pushes into him, and they fuck like that: on their sides, facing each other. Jeonghan rolls onto his back again when they’re done and reaches for the pillow, and when Seungcheol tries to curl up with him he smacks his thigh.

“We have a pickup in forty-five minutes,” he says. “Don’t whine, your alarm’s about to go off. Get in the shower, and don’t use all the hot water.”

There’s always enough hot water these days, but Seungcheol stumbles through his morning routine like he’s still dreaming. When did he start dreaming? He finishes in the bathroom and is shuffling down the hall to feed Kkuma when Jeonghan brushes past him.

“Move,” he says. “It’s running down my legs, it’s disgusting,” and Seungcheol gapes after him before Kkuma’s impatient noises pull him back onto course.

-

The driver doesn’t seem surprised to be picking them up together. They’re only the first stop; Minghao’s apartment is close, and then Mingyu and Wonwoo. Mingyu’s eyes cut between them after the first greetings, clearly mentally measuring the direction of Jeonghan and Seungkwan’s apartment and deducing that this car hasn’t been there first. It’s not a real suspicion, not anything more than Mingyu’s mind working faster in the morning than most people’s, until Jeonghan stretches in his borrowed t-shirt and a rusty-red mark on his throat rises from its concealment like the morning sun beyond the tinted car windows.

Minghao has his headphones on and his eyes closed, ignoring all of them until it’s at least seven am. Wonwoo is staring dreamily at the back of the seat. Mingyu looks sharply at Seungcheol, and he looks away.

-

Jeonghan behaves normally all day. There’s nothing in how he acts to give away the fact that he fucked Seungcheol last night, or this morning. He’s mostly quiet, but he cackles with laughter when something goes wrong; he takes the bag Seungkwan had brought from home for him and digs in it, coming up with a fistful of snacks. He annoys Mingyu until Mingyu stops glaring and then, once he’s soft as butter, cruelly abandons him to fuss over Seokmin instead.

Hansol takes out one of his earbuds and peers at Seungcheol. “Are you okay, hyung?”

“Fine,” Seungcheol says. “I didn’t get enough sleep.”

“Sucks,” Hansol says, and offers him the earbud. They listen to some song in English that Seungcheol’s never heard before, a calm male voice over the slow chords of a guitar and an echoing female vocalist like a ghost repeating the lyrics a beat behind. When it’s done Hansol nods and reclaims the earbud.

It helps.

When it’s end of day, Jeonghan slings his bag over his shoulder and follows Seungcheol out.

“Aren’t you being a bit too obvious?” Seungcheol asks him as they wait for his ride.

“It’s not a secret,” Jeonghan says. “It’s management-approved. I could fuck you on CEO-nim’s desk and he’d just pass me a tissue and tell me my percentage was going up this quarter.”

-

Jeonghan’s bag contains clean underwear, a change of clothing, pyjamas, a bag of toiletries, and a squeeze pump of clear lube.

“You asked Seungkwan to pack that?”

“I told him I was a little sore,” Jeonghan says. “He says it’s not only for asses.”

“When did you,” Seungcheol says helplessly, and then he pictures Jeonghan lying on his back in his bed while Seungcheol was getting ready this morning, still wet between his legs, texting with Seungkwan, and can’t finish his sentence. “He can’t think it’s a good idea.”

“He’s being supportive of my ‘slut era’,” Jeonghan says, making a face. “I didn’t tell him the other part.”

“I don’t really think this is a good idea,” Seungcheol says weakly. He should have said that earlier. Yesterday. Last week. “It’s not even your idea. Do you really want—”

“It’s the decision I’ve made,” Jeonghan says. “The only thing up to you is if you’re part of it. Unless it’s already too late, of course.”

Seungcheol thinks about too late and goes cold from his sternum to his knees. The feeling is pure emotion: it’s not clear to him if it’s positive or negative, if it’s logical at all. It terrifies him, and it makes him want.

“You said you were sore.”

“Not that sore,” Jeonghan says. “Just be careful,” like Seungcheol’s been in control or in charge of any of this.

They fuck on the couch this time, in shallow thrusts, Seungcheol leaning back against the cushions and Jeonghan half in his lap, half stretched over him. He can kiss Jeonghan when it’s like this, thumb his nipples. Jeonghan sighs when he touches them, closing his eyes like it feels good.

It might be the lube they’re using, or the fact that Seungcheol’s already come twice in the past twenty-four hours, but this time he sees his orgasm coming before it hits him, and he’s able to keep it at bay for a while, thrusting slowly up into Jeonghan and dragging his lips over his neck.

He kisses Jeonghan again before he gets up. The kiss is almost more intimate than the sex: slow, soft, lingering. Jeonghan hums a little when Seungcheol pulls away, and the happiness that that sounds kindles follows him down the hall to wash up and then back into the living room, where Jeonghan has arranged himself on the couch like a dead person, flat on his back and his eyes shut, his arms straight by his sides.

Kkuma sits on her haunches in the kitchen while Seungcheol makes dinner, mostly well-behaved and just keen to spend some time with him; the dogsitter had come while Seungcheol was working, so she’s had her walk and is exhausted and content. Not unlike Seungcheol himself. Or Jeonghan; he resurrects when the food is ready, struggling upright and making sad sounds until Seungcheol brings his bowl over to him instead of making him come to the table.

They get ready for bed in shifts, used to sharing a bathroom, and then Seungcheol says, ”Can I see?”

“I’m sore,” Jeonghan complains, but he lets Seungcheol part his legs and look at him.

He never has before; he’s known Jeonghan was C-status almost from the start, the rumour arriving at the company around the same time Jeonghan did. It’s a common slur on any boy who looks too pretty: he’s a carrier, they whisper. He’s sleeping with management, that’s how he’s passing his evaluations. Except that wasn’t how Jeonghan got through, and no one confirmed that he was a carrier until the lineup was finalised for debut.

“No one should treat him differently,” their manager had said. “We don’t want anyone outside the company to know for sure. They’ll guess, but you won’t refer to it or answer questions. Is that understood? He shouldn’t be different from any other member.”

Jeonghan hadn’t said anything. He’d been sitting on his chair in a row of squirming trainees, absolutely still, his hands folded in his lap and his growing-out hair a half-curtain over his face.

“It shouldn’t cause any issues,” the manager had added, and he’d looked at each of them in turn. “We don’t want any issues, do you understand?”

“It’s good that they’re supportive,” Seungcheol had said tentatively to Jeonghan afterwards — he was going to be the leader, he had to deal with these things — and Jeonghan had laughed incredulously, tipping his head back and letting his hair split around the sharp triangle of his jaw.

“Is that what you think? They weren’t being supportive, they were warning everyone else not to fuck me,” he said, and later Seungcheol had seen him whispering with Joshua. They’d nearly left together after that meeting; the fourth time they’d come close to that line.

The last time, as far as Seungcheol knows.

He knows what carriers are meant to look like down there, but it’s the first time he’s seen it: Jeonghan’s normal-looking dick, lying placidly against his hip, but behind it no hanging testicles. Jeonghan doesn’t shave or trim. It makes his labia less visually shocking, but when Seungcheol parts them he’s pink, still sticky inside from when Seungcheol fucked him on the couch. He’s showered, but he hasn’t cleaned himself out.

“Sore,” Jeonghan complains when Seungcheol leans down to breathe him in: he smells like both of them, like sex, and Seungcheol nuzzles closer, rubbing his face into Jeonghan’s cunt. He’s moving his mouth when Jeonghan pulls his head up, jerking him roughly by his hair. “No.”

The gesture leaves Seungcheol’s mouth roughly level with his dick. Jeonghan doesn’t complain when Seungcheol nuzzles that; he leans back onto his elbows and sighs, letting Seungcheol take it into his mouth. His hand stays in Seungcheol’s hair, gentle now as Seungcheol tries to figure out what to do with a dick in his mouth, how to get Jeonghan hard.

It starts to work, though spit is running down the corner of his mouth and his jaw begins to ache by the end. Jeonghan starts to breathe sharply through his nose. When he finally comes, he’s quiet. Seungcheol isn’t expecting the sudden rush of salty-sourness at the back of his throat, but he swallows, swallows again, chokes a little.

“You did well,” Jeonghan says. His voice is croaky, like he’s the one who was on his knees. “Maybe I’ll be less sore in the morning.”

-

They both sleep through their alarms. Jeonghan has fresh clothing, but he steals another of Seungcheol’s shirts, and Seungcheol doesn’t bother complaining. Seeing Jeonghan in his clothes has always stirred up a tangle of feelings, desire and longing and annoyance and smugness; now it makes him feel smugger. He’s seen Jeonghan naked except for that shirt, stepping on Seungcheol’s feet in the kitchen and dodging around the dog as he tries to fill up his water bottle, cursing under his breath, his bare thighs the faintly bluish colour of skim milk.

Remembering that, even though they’re dressed and waiting to leave, Seungcheol pushes him back against the counter. Jeonghan squirms, then relaxes into it, kissing him back with sudden passion. While they’re busy one of their phones starts to vibrate angrily, and Jeonghan finally shoves him away and answers it.

They have different schedules this morning. Jeonghan’s car comes first, and he’s gone, his water bottle in one hand and his overnight bag over his shoulder. The only thing he leaves behind is the bottle of lube on Seungcheol’s bedside table.

-

Most of the members haven’t noticed. Mingyu knows. Mingyu notices things about people: who’s mad at who, who’s suddenly close, who’s feeling short-tempered and needs to be jollied along, who’s had a breakup or a disappointment and needs a little extra kindness. Even if he hadn’t seen the hickey, Mingyu would know.

Seungkwan knows, because he worries when Jeonghan doesn’t come home. Jeonghan always comes home, apparently, and if he hadn’t told Seungkwan his plans in advance, Seungkwan would have alerted everyone on their staff and possibly the police as well. Seungkwan knows far too much, Seungcheol suspects, though he still likes the idea of Jeonghan telling him about it, or he would if he could be sure what Jeonghan was saying was good.

He hadn’t expected Joshua not to know. Jeonghan hides things from Joshua sometimes, either because he thinks it’s funny to taunt him for a while with something he doesn’t know or because he thinks Joshua will judge him too much. These aren’t usually serious things to anyone except Joshua and Jeonghan.

-

Jeonghan doesn’t come home with him the next night, or the night after, and Seungcheol thinks fatalistically: well, that was that. Forty-eight hours of madness, or a little less, not even wrapped around a weekend. After all these years of longing, it’s not enough, but it’s more than he ever thought he’d have.

He still has that last moment in his kitchen and the way Jeonghan had suddenly gripped his shoulders and kissed him back, hard: he has the memory of Jeonghan in his bed, curled in on himself to sleep. Jeonghan in his living room, half-naked, taking Seungcheol’s hand and guiding it to his chest.

He has physical therapy, doctor’s appointments, practice, special sessions that his physiotherapist sits in on, where they try to figure out what he can do on the stage, where his limits are for now, how not to push them too hard. How to hide his weakness as much as possible among the group, among their dancers: even on the screen, with camera angles and cuts. He hates all of it as much as he’s grateful for it.

He texts Jeonghan privately a few times: ? and are you okay?

He gets back ?? and kekeke why wouldn’t I be.

When you try to hold onto Jeonghan too hard, he withdraws, like a sea-snail closing its portal to the world after being pried off a rock. You could try smashing it open, but then all you’ll have left are fragments, not the living thing.

Nearly three weeks after they last slept together, a week before their Incheon concerts, Jeonghan catches his arm at the end of a late practice and says, “Come home with me?”

There’s Kkuma to think about, but it’s Jeonghan, always slipping out of his fingers, so Seungcheol messages both his hyung and his dog-walker and promises them anything, everything; please take care of his baby. No, he’s okay, he has a late schedule tonight and won’t be home. Jeonghan’s hand is on his knee in the car while he’s texting, curled gently around the curve of it.

Seungkwan’s home, which Seungcheol had forgotten to worry about. He’s sitting on the sectional, and his eyebrows go up when Jeonghan and Seungcheol come in, holding hands. “Oh, this is still happening,” he says, putting down his phone.

There’s a costume drama paused on the TV, and a pile of snacks next to him. On the wall, pale bleach-blond Jeonghans and Seungkwans leer creepily down from their couple portraits.

“We were meant to watch that together,” Jeonghan says.

“I was going to start the episode again when you got in.”

“Start again, then,” Jeonghan says, and because this domestic power struggle is clearly more important than whatever Jeonghan dragged him home for, Seungcheol finds himself watching two episodes from somewhere in the middle of a forty-episode drama, Seungkwan explaining what’s happening and Jeonghan trying to shush him. He leans against Jeonghan’s shoulder and closes his eyes, and when he opens them again, peace has somehow been restored.

“We can turn off the lights and let you sleep out here,” Jeonghan says sweetly. “Get him a blanket, Seungkwan-ah.”

“I’m awake,” Seungcheol says, blinking. Strands of his hair have caught in his eyelashes, and he blinks harder, trying to clear them, until Jeonghan swoops in to brush them away with his thumb.

“Go to your room,” Seungkwan hisses.

“I’m not going to fuck him on this couch,” Jeonghan snaps back, and Seungkwan leans over the space between them to start slapping punitively at his shins for the suggestion.

-

Jeonghan’s room is still a dorm room. The long blue curtains are anonymous; the bed is just a little larger than a single. There’s a collection of framed photos and pictures stuck on the wall, and a random pile of pillows, including Toram and several other stuffed creatures Seungcheol suspects were gifts or tie-in products Jeonghan found cute or couldn’t quite bear to trash. More expensive gifts and free samples clutter his desk in a magpie jumble, half still in their bags or wrappings.

Jeonghan lets Seungcheol kiss him once the door is safely closed, bringing his hand up to run his fingertips lightly along Seungcheol’s jaw. He’s in one of his baggy shirts, stolen from someone else this time or bought too large on purpose. He doesn’t take it off. His jeans go, then his underwear; then he makes Seungcheol undress, shoving the extra cushions and toys off the bed so he can arrange Seungcheol with his back against the headboard.

“No,” Seungcheol says, pouting, when Jeonghan tries to move away, pulling him back.

“I’m not supposed to let you fuck me again without lube.”

“I just want to kiss you.”

Jeonghan scoffs, shifting his weight in Seungcheol’s lap. “Sure.”

“It’ll be better if we do this for a while first.” He runs circles with his fingers up and down Jeonghan’s back, over the tense muscle in his shoulders, kissing his jaw and his throat and the side of his mouth until Jeonghan relents.

They kiss for a while like they never did when they were really teenagers. Seungcheol tries to ignore the fact that Jeonghan’s pressed against his dick, that they’re both naked except for Jeonghan’s shirt and the hair-tie on his thin wrist. When he really can’t ignore it any longer, Jeonghan clicks his tongue, chastising, rises up on his knees a little, bracing himself on Seungcheol’s shoulders, and sinks back down on his dick.

“So impatient,” he says, like he’s not the one who just took decisive action. “Or just a liar. Which one, Coups-ah?”

“Not a liar,” Seungcheol manages. Jeonghan’s so tight around him, but he’s wet. Some of it has to be his own precome, but the rest of it must be coming from Jeonghan, easing the slide of Seungcheol’s dick inside him.

“Hm,” Jeonghan says, sounding sceptical. He hasn’t taken his hair down, and it’s still pulled back in a little ponytail, the longer parts loose around his neck. “You said it would be better.”

Seungcheol gasps. “It is — it is better.”

“Is it?”

“Yes,” Seungcheol says, weakly, and Jeonghan hums, wiggling his hips like he’s testing Seungcheol, or his statement, or both.

He doesn’t say anything, but his eyebrows start to come together. His movements become more purposeful; wavy rolls of his pelvis that go on and on once he’s found an angle he likes. Back and forth, back and forth, until Seungcheol gasps again, bucks up into him, and comes.

“Maybe you were right,” Jeonghan says, not in a rush to climb off tonight. He has Seungcheol pinned under him and against the wall, inside him and starting to soften, and he doesn’t seem ready to give up any of those advantages.

He makes another thoughtful little noise, then pecks Seungcheol on the forehead. “Good job.”

-

In the morning, Jeonghan wants a glass of water — not from the bathroom, Seungcheollie — so Seungcheol stumbles out into the kitchen.

Seungkwan is standing by the sink, stirring a sachet of something into his own glass. His eyebrows form perfect semi-circles of judgement.

“Morning,” Seungcheol says, wincing.

It’s been a long time since he went home with anyone who had a roommate. He’s never gone home with anyone whose roommate is someone he already knows: a friend, a colleague.

A small, judgmental dongsaeng Seungcheol has known since he was fourteen years old, who might have heard them this morning when Jeonghan let Seungcheol try sucking his dick again, then said, “Okay, put it in me, quickly.”

“I suppose it’s my turn,” Seungkwan says, gracious. His metal spoon clicks against the insides of his glass, clink clink clink. “I’ve had company over before. He’s earned his own back.”

“Sorry,” Seungcheol says. He finds a glass in the cupboard and starts to fill it at the tap.

“Is that for Jeonghan-hyung?” When he nods, Seungkwan sighs. “He doesn’t like the tap water. He thinks it tastes like chlorine. There’s Jeju Samsadoo in the fridge, he likes that.”

Once Seungcheol’s filled a new, uncontaminated glass to the brim, Seungkwan says, “I’ll get his vitamins.”

He sorts out five pills of different colours and sizes from the collection of bottles on the bench; looks at Seungcheol sideways, then selects another two. “Those ones are for you. Red ginseng — good for blood flow.”

Seungcheol flees down the hall. Jeonghan’s showering. He’s already dressed when he comes out of the bathroom, his hair in a damp little tail.

“Oh,” he says, when Seungcheol offers him the vitamins, “I forgot,” and vanishes back into the bathroom. He has more pills in his palm when he returns. He tosses them back with Seungkwan’s vitamins, swallowing with a terrifying efficiency.

-

A certain kind of awareness glows through the cracks of his busy schedules, leaking into everything, more complicated than the simple repetition of orgasms. Seungcheol’s been craving Jeonghan for so many years: sometimes intensely, sometimes only wistfully, sometimes even absent-mindedly, like a fact so basic he’s almost forgotten it. He’s spent a decade starving for Jeonghan’s time, for his attention, for his skin. Getting so much of it, so unexpectedly, doesn’t sate the longing: it sharpens it, leaving him somewhere between elation and desperation.

He feels stretched too thin on every front to do more than stumble from one block of activity to the next. It’s easy, like this, to fall into line: to do what Jeonghan wants, when Jeonghan wants, to follow his lead. What Jeonghan seems to want is to go home with him, or take him back to his own apartment. They order takeout instead of cooking, because there’s no time for that now. Kkuma hates being shut away for sex, but she doesn’t respect the closed door of Seungcheol’s bedroom, and he can’t do anything while she’s making her mournful sounds just outside, tragic whines that break his heart while Jeonghan sniggers into his shoulder.

Jeonghan never cares whether he comes too fast; when he thinks Seungcheol is taking too long, he encourages him to finish, whispering in his ear about how strong he is, ah, how well he’s eating, how he’s doing a good job, come on, Seungcheollie, get it done –

“Isn’t it boring?” Seungcheol asks. Jeonghan is doing his thing with the pillow, flat on his back staring at Seungcheol’s bedroom ceiling. His hipbones look terribly sharp like this, his pelvis angled back and his dick soft against his thigh.

“Sleeping with you?” Jeonghan asks, and laughs his croaking laugh. “No, I’m thinking.”

“What about?”

“Wouldn’t you like to know.”

“I do,” Seungcheol says. He always wants to know what Jeonghan’s thinking, even when he doesn’t think he’ll like the answer, or understand it.

Jeonghan sighs, stretching his arms out, careful not to move off the pillow. There’s a fading needle-prick on the inside of his elbow, a little blossom of broken blood vessels that stands out against the pale translucency of his skin, the green and blue tangle of his veins. “Don’t worry about it.”

-

The first concert in Incheon goes well. So does the second one. Jeonghan’s ankle holds up: Seungcheol doesn’t fall or trip or injure his knee more badly, but it throbs unhappily throughout both shows, and he ices it for hours after the last Aju Nice has faded. Jeonghan takes the same car home with him after the second concert, and Seungcheol thinks, this is it: he’s going to have to tell Jeonghan no.

But Jeonghan just helps him get undressed and showered. Seungcheol sits on the closed lid of the toilet while Jeonghan does his skin routine for him. He helps Seungcheol into the shower, then back to his room, and with the arrangement of pillows Seungcheol needs to keep his knee elevated. His physio re-strapped it for him backstage, but it’s throbbing, a sick wrongness whenever he shifts.

“These, right?” Jeonghan says matter-of-factly, and offers him his pain medication.

Seungcheol shouldn’t be hurting so much: he’s been working on his range of movement, his stamina, practising every day both alone and with the members for weeks. It hasn’t been enough. He wants to scream through his clenched teeth.

He breathes in harshly through his nose and takes the pills.

-

There’s a few more weeks before they have their next concerts in April. Seungcheol has a timetable he’s always thinking about, but there’s another one, a shadow schedule, the one Jeonghan keeps in his head. They don’t sleep together for nearly a fortnight after the Incheon shows, and Seungcheol tortures himself over it until Jeonghan tugs on his wrist after a shared fancall and and tilts his head, making the same silly twist of his mouth he made in Seungcheol’s living room the first time.

He doesn’t know why Jeonghan thinks that particular expression means sex, but, unfortunately, it works for Seungcheol. Jeonghan screws his face up like that, and he’s ready: ready to follow him home even though it’s mid-afternoon and it’s a rare block of free time he could be gaming or at the gym or putting in some extra practice.

He’s getting better, even though some days he’s too stiff and sore and Soonyoung and the rest of the dance team won’t let him push through it. His extension is improving.

“That’s good, Coups-ah,” Jeonghan says absentmindedly. “Come on. Pants off.”

“Don’t you care?”

“Of course I do.”

“You don’t seem to,” Seungcheol accuses. It’s unfair: they both went through rehab, met for drinks while they were both still hobbling around on crutches, hung out and bemoaned everything they were missing out on together. If anyone knows what Seungcheol is going through, it’s Jeonghan.

But Jeonghan’s ankle is almost normal again, and Seungcheol’s knee isn’t. Seungcheol missed out on Italy, and Seungcheol wasn’t on the stage, not really, when they finally got their Daesang, and he’s still not healing as fast or as well as he wants to be. Jeonghan is healthy enough that the military thinks he’ll be fine to go through training.

Seungcheol knows the company has asked for an extension through the next tour, but after that, Jeonghan could get his enlistment date at any time, and as far as Seungcheol knows, there’s no reason yet why he wouldn’t have to go.

He chokes most of this out, a jumbled rush of missing out and unfit and thirteen, the embarrassing litany of unfairness he manages to keep shoved down most of the time, and Jeonghan strokes his back like he’s encouraging Seungcheol to get it all out.

“I know,” he says. “That’s why we’re doing this.”

“It’s still not a good idea,” Seungcheol says, wetly.

“Shh,” Jeonghan says, and kisses him.

-

His hair fades from the fire-engine red he dyed it for Incheon into orange, into apricot, into something closer to peach, a sunset in reverse. It stops leaving crimson smudges on his pillows and everything he rests against, but he keeps leaving red marks on Jeonghan’s skin, among the needle-pricks and the bruises from practice and the injury tape, the nicotine patches. It’s a contested landscape.

Sitting onstage in Seoul, Jeonghan collapses sideways into Seungcheol’s lap and closes his eyes like he could just go to sleep there, with seventy thousand eyes on him, a little smile curving his mouth and his eyelashes peaceful against his cheeks.

By the time they arrive in Osaka, the other members know they’re fucking. When they’re getting their hotel keycards their tour manager says, “And of course you’ll be sharing, Coups-ssi, Jeonghan-ssi.”

Jeonghan nods, the little smile on his mouth again. Seungcheol blinks.

“What’s going on?” Seokmin says, and is hushed.

They don’t draw a tight line between members and staff, but now Soonyoung draws that line, politely, asking their managers and choreographers and support staff to give them some space.

“Let’s not make a big deal about this,” Seungcheol starts once they’re alone, trying to raise his voice over the sudden burst of noise as half the group tries to speak.

Soonyoung says, also raising his voice, “It’s a big deal if it’s something all the staff know!”

“Know what?” Hansol asks, shouting only to be heard. “What’s happening?”

“Hyungs are sleeping together,” Mingyu says, though it’s more like hyungs are sleeping together!!!, bursting out of him like it’s been waiting since that morning in the car, building up pressure the longer he’s been keeping quiet. Jihoon curses. “It’s been a few months.”

No one else seems that surprised: Jun darts a quick glance around the room, but that’s it. Chan screws up his face, like he’s tried to forget this information but will, reluctantly, admit that he possesses it. They haven’t been careful. Sometimes Jeonghan seems almost too happy to inform a manager that he needs to be picked up from Seungcheol’s, or vice versa.

“We don’t have meetings about people’s private lives,” Seungkwan says.

“I don’t care who they fuck,” Soonyoung says. “But if they’re fucking, and the company knows–”

“They don’t care.” Jeonghan laughs, slightly metallic. “They really don’t.”

“Then everything’s fine,” Seungkwan says, rounding on the room. “Right?”

It doesn’t surprise Seungcheol that it’s Soonyoung who’s the most upset. He really doesn’t care who anyone fucks, up to a certain line, and that line is danger to their team. Soonyoung cares about the team, and he’ll turn on anything he sees as a threat to them as strongly as he’ll defend them against any outsider.

Seungkwan is similar, if a little more sentimental. No one wants to see the two of them seriously fight it out. It will hurt too much, and they’re all protective of Seungkwan, especially now.

Seungcheol’s been floundering, left flat-footed, but he says, trying to sound like a leader, “You know how it goes. When we’re transparent and upfront, our staff can predict issues better. They can work to avoid them. There won’t be any issues.”

“Fine,” Jihoon says shortly. “Make sure of it.”

“You can’t guarantee there won’t be.” Soonyoung, chin thrust up.

“The only way to guarantee that is to stop fucking.” Jeonghan says it to him directly, almost personally, like none of the others are there. He doesn’t shout. “Are you asking me to do that?”

Soonyoung breathes in. He shakes his head. No one else says anything.

The argument feels suddenly finished. They’ve come to another line that will be respected: unhappy or not, no one will ask them to stop. Given that line, the soft but not entirely happy sense of consensus about crossing it, there’s nowhere else for the discussion to go, and Chan edges towards the door.

Joshua snags Jeonghan’s wrist as the others start to file out. “Hey.”

“Not now.”

“Now,” Joshua says pleasantly.

“Shua,” Jeonghan sighs, trying to tug himself free. “It’s not important.”

“It’s not important,” Joshua repeats. He’s still smiling tightly. “Really? A few months, and the company knows?”

“I’m not talking about this with you.”

Joshua says, “Yeah, clearly,” and lets him go.

-

“Why did you do that?” Seungcheol asks.

That scene didn’t need to happen. No one would have said anything if one of them had just moved into the other’s room, even if they noticed, the way most of the members have been saying nothing about anything they’ve noticed until now. Jeonghan had known the room sharing was coming, and he’d steered them directly into that confrontation, and now he seems bitterly triumphant. The staff, the members, Seungcheol: it’s not clear who his victory is against.

“I didn’t do anything,” he says. Then, “I don’t want to talk about it, Seungcheollie.”

“Let me guess, you want to fuck instead.”

“I just want to sleep. I didn’t get any rest on the plane.”

Jeonghan does look tired. The shadows under his eyes are grey. He always looks more vulnerable barefaced, which is surprising because the makeup usually softens his features, adding pinkness and shine to his mouth, making him paler, his eyes deeper. They’re hollow enough like this, smudgy with weariness.

-

Seungcheol leaves him to sleep. The only thing on their schedule tonight is rest before everything starts ramping up for their first Japan shows in the morning. Someone will usually peel off to nap, someone else might want to slip out and explore the city, but most of them will stay in the hotel and relax on the floor that’s been blocked off for them: access denied to anyone with the wrong keycard via the elevator, a watch on the fire escape stairs. Their parent company doesn’t take chances with sasaengs, and when they want somewhere sealed, it happens.

He doesn’t feel like he can crash in anyone else’s room right now, so when Minghao asks, he goes for a walk around Osaka with him, two of their security staff lurking behind them like it’s a double date.

Minghao takes photos on his phone: clashing signs, strings of paper lanterns, street food carts, a waffle shaped like a fish. A boiled-whole baby octopus, shining jewel-like red, each of its perfect small limbs curled in on itself in spirals and its oversized head the size of a hen’s egg.

Seungcheol’s supposed to be watching his diet, but he can’t walk through the markets and not eat anything. They eat meat skewers on stools down a side street, their security trying to be inconspicuous in their hovering, and Minghao flicks back through the photos he’s taken, frowning over them.

“You want me to take one of you?”

“Sure,” Minghao says, but his eyes dip distrustfully down to Seungcheol’s greasy fingers, so it’s Seungcheol’s phone they take the selcas on: one of each other, then an angled shot, the corner of Minghao’s mouth quirked up and Seungcheol’s cheeks creased with his own manufactured smile.

He doesn’t really want to go back to the hotel yet, so they walk on, enjoying the early evening and the anonymity. The sky deepens into cerulean, then into a darker, richer blue, against which the neon lights glow. Seungcheol buys stuffed mochi to take back for Jeonghan. Minghao looks at him like he knows why Seungcheol’s buying it, but he doesn’t say anything.

“It’s not my business,” Minghao says, when Seungcheol finally asks what he really thinks. “But we only have one life, and we have to live with integrity. If it’s what you want and what makes you happy, then it’s good.”

What else did he expect from Minghao, who is dispassionately judgmental about many small things, but also dispassionately unjudgmental about what he thinks really matters to someone? Is he happy, is Jeonghan happy? Seungcheol’s not sure. Happiness isn’t the point.

When they get back to the hotel, the loud cluster of members who are hanging out hush, a little, when Seungcheol walks in, but then Chan belts out a line, and Seokmin matches it, and the noise picks back up. No sign of Hansol, or Joshua, or Jeonghan.

Mingyu says, “Ah, hyung, I miiiissed you,” and tries to hug him and take the paper bag of mochi from him at the same time. Seungcheol has to keep them from getting squashed or ruined and also withstand Mingyu’s targeted pouting when he realises the treats aren’t for him. He almost gives in, but then there’s a sudden burst of laughter — something’s happening in the corner — and Mingyu gets distracted enough that he can slip away.

Their hotel room is cool, the blinds closed and the air-conditioning on. Jeonghan is curled in on himself like one of the octopuses from the market, his knees drawn up and his back to the door.

Seungcheol puts the bag of mochi on the bedside table. A little later, when he slides into bed behind Jeonghan, Jeonghan murmurs something, but he doesn’t wake up.

-

They’re up as soon as their alarms go off. There’s a call anyway from one of the managers to make sure they’re awake, but no one opens their door to get visual confirmation.

Jeonghan still looks grey, but when Seungcheol tries to check if he’s okay, he laughs and says, “Ah, the makeup noonas will take care of it, Coups-ah, don’t worry.”

It’s a long day, but there’s an energy to it, always: getting used to a space, getting ready to perform, the narrow tightrope dance of everything that needs to happen for it to work. The way all the pieces come together: the way they come together, their support crew and their staging crew, their dancers, the musical engineers; the thirteen of them onstage.

It’s Seungcheol’s fifth show back since his knee surgery, and he’s not taking it for granted yet, if he ever has. No one says anything about Jeonghan’s looming enlistment, or about the injuries and tragedies that have kept them incomplete for too much of the past year, but they’re all aware that this is something that they haven’t had for a while, that this is something they will lose again soon.

Jeonghan is always in the spotlight in Japan, stepping up to speak, his Japanese careful. He’s worked hard on it. He’s always worked hard, despite every mutter about his stamina, every online comment about his pretty face being his ticket. Carrier, there for an easy ride: just an easy ride himself, maybe.

There’s always been a slight edge to the way Jeonghan does aegyo — not quite ironic, not exactly cringing about it, but a performative commitment to being cutesy that seems aimed at making viewers either melt or recoil, no middle ground. In Osaka, they melt for him; at the hearts clipped into his hair and his smile as he cups his own cheek to form another heart, the glee exuding from him as he teases Mingyu.

He’s sweating too much when they finally wrap up the last Aju Nice, slickness running through his makeup and his hair. “I’m just hot,” Jeonghan says. “And my shoulder hurts. Seungkwannie, pass hyung an ice-pack?”

Dinner, back at the hotel, is a mix of room service and ramyeon. Jeonghan keeps the ice on his shoulder, and pretends he’s too weak to use his chopsticks one-handed. “I can feed you, hyung,” Seokmin says gallantly, filling his bowl for him. Seungcheol and Joshua make eye contact — instinctive, amused — then break it.

“That’s enough,” Jeonghan says, a few bites later, turning his face away when Seokmin tries to feed him another piece of meat.

They all eat quickly, the way they do when it’s this late, they’re this tired, and there’s another early call in the morning, another concert in the evening. Jeonghan’s shoulder is still playing up. Back in their room he stands in the bathroom for a long time, the showerhead in his hand and the water aimed at where it hurts, his eyes closed and his head tipped back.

He doesn’t bother shutting the bathroom door, so Seungcheol watches him: his thin body in the shower, the way the hotel robe swallows him up. The way he stands at the sink slapping on his toner and rubs a little too hard at his face, making grimaces at himself in the mirror.

They don’t fuck. They arrange themselves gingerly in bed, careful of Seungcheol’s knee, Jeonghan’s shoulder. The painkillers kicking in make Seungcheol feel a little fuzzy around the edges. Jeonghan twists a little to kiss his cheek before he settles down to sleep.

-

Jeonghan needs an IV backstage in Yokohama, between stages. The insides of his elbows are tapped out, flat and resistant, so their medical staff inserts it into the back of his hand.

“It hurts more like that,” Chan says. “I’m sorry, hyung.”

Jeonghan says, “Ah, it’s fine,” eyes still shut. He holds out his other hand, imperiously, and Seungcheol takes it.

-

In Seoul, Seungcheol’s brother has been taking good care of Kkuma. She loses her mind when Seungcheol gets in, dancing around his feet and yipping so loudly that in a less well-insulated building his neighbours would probably be planning to register their complaints with the management.

It’s one of the reasons he brought her home: he so badly needed something to love, someone who would need his care and depend upon him, giving him a reason to get out of bed when everything else was pressing down on him like lead. Someone who would love him back this well, this openly.

His nosy hyung gives him a moment to wheel his suitcases in and pat his dog, then tries to interrogate him about the satin hair-tie he found in Seungcheol’s bathroom.

“It’s mine,” Seungcheol says.

“Your hair’s not long enough right now for that, Cheol-ah.”

“Then it’s the dog’s.”

“Do you have a girlfriend? You can tell me.”

“I don’t,” Seungcheol says, and it’s not really a lie.

-

They have a little time off before they start preparing for Glastonbury. Jeonghan doesn’t message him the first two days they’re back.

The third day, he comes over when Seungcheol’s hyung is out walking Kkuma, biting his lip a few times like he wants to say something, but he never does. Instead he moves aimlessly around Seungcheol’s living room, touching things he’s trying to leave his fingerprints everywhere, as though he wants every detective in Hannam-dong to point straight to him if Seungcheol should drop dead tomorrow.

“Jeonghan-ah,” Seungcheol says. “What do you want?”

Jeonghan laughs. “That’s the question, isn’t it,” he says. “Come here, Seungcheollie.”

What he wants, apparently: for Seungcheol to hold him. His heart beats rapidly where he’s pressed to Seungcheol’s chest. He lifts his chin when Seungcheol starts to kiss his jaw, giving him access to more skin, and he sighs when Seungcheol’s hand slips into the waistband of his pants.

In the bedroom, the bed is still unmade, Seungcheol’s suitcases from Japan still not unpacked. Jeonghan knows that he doesn’t live like that all the time – sometimes Seungcheol makes sure everything looks good, just in case he invites himself over – but he still says “Ah, so messy,” and laughs again when Seungcheol scowls. “Come here, Coups-ah.”

Here is the bed; here is kissing again, slow and deliberate. They roll over, Seungcheol’s tongue in Jeonghan’s mouth, Jeonghan’s hands spread open on his ribcage. His nipples are always a lighter colour than Seungcheol expects them to be.

“Not on top,” Jeonghan says, when Seungcheol lifts himself over him, “your knee—”

“It’s fine right now,” Seungcheol says. He slides down Jeonghan’s body and pushes his knees apart. He kisses Jeonghan’s thigh, just above the knee, and then lower; kisses again, nuzzling his way down until he can slide his tongue over the split seam of his labia. Jeonghan twitches like he’s going to close his legs, but he keeps them open when Seungcheol moves up to his dick.

He takes that into his mouth instead. He’s come to enjoy doing this for its own sake: the way it feels on his tongue, the particular tang of Jeonghan’s arousal. When he slides two fingers into his cunt, Jeonghan quivers, but he doesn’t stop Seungcheol or pull away. Instead he closes his eyes, his hands clenching in the messy sheets, and lets Seungcheol try to make it good for him. He’s tight, but already getting wet; the longer Seungcheol sucks him off, the wetter he gets, until he’s taking three.

Just before Jeonghan comes, he says, “What are you doing to me,” and then he makes a sobbing noise and spurts in Seungcheol’s throat, clenching down at the same time.

He curls up on his side when Seungcheol takes his fingers out of him, squeezing his eyes shut. Seungcheol leans down to kiss his forehead, but Jeonghan’s face pinches tighter, and he backs off.

He sits there with him, rubbing his hip, until Jeonghan’s breathing finally evens out. He sits up.

“Are you—”

“Don’t say anything, Choi Seungcheol,” Jeonghan warns him, though Seungcheol is usually Coups-ah to him, sometimes a hissing and sibilant Ess-coups-ah, a softer Seungcheollie.

He pushes Seungcheol flat on his back, straddles him, and sinks down on his dick all the way in one smooth movement. It feels easier than it’s ever been: even the time Jeonghan got gruesomely overenthusiastic with the pump-bottle of lube, slathering Seungcheol’s dick with it, getting it all over the shaft and his pubic hair and even the tops of his thighs, a messy fuck that left the sheets too gross to sleep on. It’s just Jeonghan this time, the wetness; Jeonghan moving with vehement jerks of his hips and gasping on top of him.

Afterwards, Jeonghan falls asleep half on his chest. His eyelashes are wet, sparkling a little under the overhead lights. Seungcheol wants to get up and turn them off, but not as much as he wants to stay just like this.

-

He has to get up when he hears the sound of the front door opening, his brother coming back. He can hear Kkuma’s suddenly energised bark like she’s caught the scent of her enemy’s presence, and he slides out from under Jeonghan as carefully as he can.

“What happened to you?” his hyung asks when Seungcheol stumbles out to intercept him and calm the dog down. When Seungcheol hushes him and tries to take Kkuma’s lead and shove him out the door, he lingers, grinning. “Oh, is someone here? Can’t I meet her?”

“You have to go,” Seungcheol whispers.

“Your ears are all red! What, are you ashamed of me –”

“Shh. You’ll wake him.”

His brother’s expression changes. “Cheol-ah,” he says, quietly, and Seungcheol sighs like he’s giving something up, pushing his hand through his hair.

“I’ll go,” his hyung says. He grips Seungcheol’s arm, then pats it, before the door closes.

-

The bed’s empty the next morning, which Seungcheol was expecting. Jeonghan hates to give too much of himself away. It’s a miracle that he let himself fall asleep with Seungcheol at all after that.

Seungcheol knows this, but he lies in bed feeling resentful and abandoned anyway. He rushes to get up when he hears a sound from the bathroom that makes him worry for Kkuma, but it’s Jeonghan he finds in there, bent over the sink.

He’s wearing one of Seungcheol’s shirts, and his legs are bare under it. It’s not sexy, only disarming; he’s heaving, dry shaking shudders that seem to bring nothing up but clear strings of spit and bile. He winces when he sees Seungcheol behind him in the mirror, but he doesn’t say anything.

Another paroxysm of retching overtakes him.

Seungcheol strokes his back through it until Jeonghan waves him away. Then he goes into the kitchen to get him water; he’s started keeping bottles of Jeonghan’s preferred brand in the fridge, and his brother hasn’t finished all of them while he was dogsitting. “You should see the doctor,” he tells Jeonghan when he hands it to him.

“I have,” Jeonghan says. He looks at Seungcheol in the mirror; then he rolls his eyes. “I’m seeing them again on Monday. It’s fine.”

“Still.”

“I bet you don’t want to kiss me right now.”

“I would.”

“Sure,” Jeonghan says, dismissive.

Back in the bedroom, he dresses, then wanders into the wardrobe to borrow a jacket from Seungcheol’s collection. He lingers over the shelf of Seungcheol’s watch boxes, toying with them, but it’s the Audemars Piguet he pulls out, putting it on and looking at Seungcheol sideways like he’s expecting an explosion.

“What if I wear this home?”

On his slender wrist it looks huge and out of place, the gold too yellow against his skin. He’s still testing Seungcheol, trying to start a fight. That’s another way of not being vulnerable.

“Don’t lose it,” Seungcheol says.

-

He thinks about it all day; Jeonghan walking around wearing his watch like a claim, Jeonghan gasping and clenching around his fingers, the wetness on his eyelashes.

Jeonghan posts a selca of himself wearing the Piguet in their group chat a few hours later, a photo that’s ostensibly meant to be of his dinner but coyly features his wrist in the foreground.

hyung, you let him take your watch? Wonwoo comments.

whipped. Soonyoung. you’re not getting that back, you know that, right?

Wow. Joshua.

Jun contributes a string of laughing cat emojis. More reactions flood in, the teasing like forgiveness.

Jeonghan messages him privately later. I’ll give it back, he says. Thanks, Coups-ah.

I’’ll just get it the next time I come over, Seungcheol says. Tomorrow?

I’ll bring it the next time we have a shared schedule, Jeonghan says, and just then, Seungcheol is only worried about his watch, imagining it floating around in Jeonghan’s pockets or shoved into his bag, part of his magpie travelling collection of snacks and odds and ends, getting scratched.

But he doesn’t see Jeonghan the next day, or the next, and when he finally sees him at the company building Jeonghan says, “Here,” and gives him back the Piguet, tucked into a drawstring dust bag whose printed label suggests it’s meant to protect a purse. “Seungkwannie told me off for taking it, and I felt bad.”

“I didn’t mind.”

“You don’t, do you?” Jeonghan says. He pulls back when Seungcheol leans in to kiss him, like he’s worried, suddenly, that someone will see. “Coups-ah…”

“What?”

“I don’t think you should do that any more.”

“Here?”

“It’s enough now,” Jeonghan says. “I think we should stop, don’t you?”

Seungcheol stares at him. Jeonghan, who hates to be looked at too hard, or held too long, or fixed in place, pinned down. Jeonghan, who he’s known since they were teenagers, intimately, loved as dearly as he loves them all: closer than a friend or a brother.

Jeonghan, who he’s never really been able to know or to have, even if he’s been allowed to put his hands on him and his tongue in his mouth, even his dick inside him; Jeonghan who is looking at him with a kind of distant pity, waiting for him to catch up.

-

Seungcheol throws up in one of the company bathrooms. It’s not one of the nice ones on the executive floors, one of ones someone important might have to use. He’d blame it on catching something from Jeonghan, but Jeonghan hadn’t been sick, not really.

How long, he’d said stupidly, and Jeonghan had shrugged. Before Japan, he’d said. Management knows. They’ll be releasing something in a few weeks, I think. They’ll probably want to talk to you first. Don’t worry, he’d added. This is my part now, you did yours.

-

Pledis have been sitting on Seungcheol’s grade five ranking, but now they make it public. They could have released it months ago, probably should have released it before he returned from hiatus, would have; but they’ve been waiting, apparently, for Jeonghan to succeed or fail.

For Jeonghan’s positive pregnancy test, which he’d reported to them when he got back from Japan, then followed up dutifully with a blood-test confirmation the first full day back in Seoul. They’re estimating him at six weeks, the manager tells him. It’s early, but they’re reporting it to the military. Once they have his official reranking at grade 5 — grade 5C — they’ll announce the exemption.

“We’re thinking six or seven months of hiatus,” the manager adds. “He should be fine for Berlin, and then we’ll consider the American tour, but we’re assuming he’ll be out for that, through to April. It’s a shame, but it’s not that long, in comparison.”

“What about the,” Seungcheol says, and gestures; he hasn’t been able to say the word yet, to think it, all this time.

-

“The what,” Jihoon says. He looks like he doesn’t know whether to be angry or not; stunned still.

Soonyoung had shouted, but Wonwoo and Mingyu had soothed him quiet, a distraction that had probably stopped Mingyu from doing as much shouting himself. Hansol’s still shaking his head.

Jun and Minghao haven’t said anything. Seokmin looks worried; Chan looks like he’d rather be anywhere else.

Seungkwan says, again, “How did this happen? You were using protection, weren’t you? Didn’t you — what about your injections?”

Jeonghan sighs. “Seungkwannie, I stopped getting them when we re-signed. They were part of my contract before.”

Their contracts had all been the same, when they re-signed. Seungcheol knows every clause of them.

He’s never seen Jeonghan’s original contract. He doesn’t know how many carrier-specific things were in it, little festering sores gnawing deeper every year. The rest of them never had a dating ban; did Jeonghan? No one asked them to legally commit to condom use; Jeonghan’s birth control shots every six months were something they knew he hated, something that made him rub his ass resentfully and complain when he wouldn’t normally talk about anything related to his C-status.

“So you, what,” Soonyoung says, flapping his hands. “Just forgot you could get pregnant? Coups-hyung stuck it in the wrong hole? You had a condom break?”

“Don’t be stupid,” Joshua says. His voice is light as always, but the sneer in it makes Seungcheol’s stomach clench. “They weren’t using them. They did it on purpose. Didn’t you?” he says, and he looks at Jeonghan, who shrugs.

“Yes,” he says, ignoring the expostulations this provokes. “I planned it. Don’t look at Seungcheollie, it’s not his fault.”

“Oh, it’s his fault too,” Joshua says, and zeroes in on Seungcheol. “You know why he didn’t ask me, or Seungkwan, or anyone else to do it? He knew we wouldn’t be stupid enough to go for it, but he knew you would just do what he told you.”

“You couldn’t do it,” Jeonghan interrupts. “You don’t like it.”

“You’re not actually a woman,” Joshua snaps. “No, I probably couldn’t, but because you’re you, not because — that’s not the point.”

“I would have done it,” Mingyu breaks in loyally. “If he’d asked.”

“I hope you would have thought about it and then thought better of it,” Joshua tells him. “Because it’s not just sex, it’s a kid. It’s Hannie signing up to have a kid because management thinks that’s a good idea, when he doesn’t even — What’s going to happen to it, Jeonghan,” he asks, swinging back around.

It’s hard for Seungcheol to believe this is actually happening. Joshua is taking up the cudgels on behalf of the little string of cells deep in Jeonghan’s belly, dividing and dividing in the dark. Like it’s real. Joshua doesn’t even really enjoy spending time with children. He gets uncomfortable around mess, around sticky fingers and disorder, and he’d probably die before changing a diaper.

“My mom’s going to take care of it,” Jeonghan says. “I’ll pay someone to help her.”

“That’s not a real plan.”

“It’s my business, Shua. I’m telling you all about it, because that part’s your business, but I’m not looking for a group vote on this.”

“Yeah, clearly,” Joshua says. He still sounds disgusted, but then his tone changes, and Seungcheol understands finally that it’s not at Jeonghan, or only a little: it’s for him. “You don’t have to do it, Hannie. It’s not too late, they haven’t announced your exemption yet.”

Jeonghan laughs, a laugh that turns into a cough. When he’s done hacking, he lifts his head, and Seungcheol is reminded, suddenly, of a younger Jeonghan, staring at his lap as the manager-hyung warned them all off him like he wasn’t right there, singling him out from the rest of the members for the first time.

The hard, perfect set of his features as he scoffed at Seungcheol’s suggestion that the company was being supportive then: that’s the look on Jeonghan’s face right now, ten years later. “Has it occurred to you that maybe I want to do this?”

They all have different individual bonds inside their net of thirteen, bonds that have shifted and changed over the decade they’ve spent together, loosening and tightening the way a new-built house slowly settles into its foundations. Joshua and Jeonghan aren’t joined at the hip these days, like when they were teenagers, but they go very deep. Natural conspirators: almost the same person, spread across two bodies.

Joshua shakes his head. “That’s not true.”

“You’re so sure of it,” Jeonghan marvels. He’s angry, too, Seungcheol realises; a slow-boiling rage long coming to the boil, the same anger as his smouldering resentment after every six-monthly shot, at any reference to his C-status, at the CEO’s loaded suggestion that he do this. Seungcheol remembers the cloud of Jeonghan’s rage in his car afterwards, choking and thick and somehow twisted in on itself. That had been real. “You really think I’d have a kid just because the company asked me to? I’ve never been as desperate for it as you, so, believe it or not, Shua, there are things I wouldn’t do for success.”

Seokmin gasps softly.

“You shouldn’t bring a kid into this,” Joshua says. “With Cheollie? Come on, you know that’s fucked up.”

“Stop dragging him into it.”

“You’re the one who did that,” Joshua says. “Which was incredibly shitty of you, by the way. You know it was.”

“You know all these things about me,” Jeonghan says. “You know I’m thirty next year? So are you. I’ll be older than that when I finish my service. Then it’s the next comeback, and the one after, and just when am I supposed to have a kid?

“In a few more years, once Seungkwannie and Channie get back from their service? We’ll all be back then, finally, and we’ll have a comeback all together again, and we’ll tour off that, and when will it be the right time? When will I have time?”

“You don’t want kids,” Joshua says, but he sounds less certain.

“You don’t want kids. I’m not you, Shua.”

A pause.

“It’s not a good time,” Jeonghan says. “I know that. But there’s not going to be a better time, not for me. This way they think it was their idea. They’ll make it easy for me now. They wouldn’t, another time.”

“Fuck them. We’d make them work it out, Hannie.”

“Oh, suddenly you’re supportive?”

“I want you to have what you want,” Joshua says. His voice has turned soft, a little tremulous.

“Believe me when I tell you what I want, then,” Jeonghan says, but he’s getting choked up, too, and he scrubs at his face like he can scrub the feelings away. It’s quiet enough to hear his ragged breathing, Joshua’s little sniffle. He pulls a face. “Ah, all this fighting! It’s bad for the baby.”

“‘The baby’,” Chan says. “That still sounds so weird, hyung. The baby.”

Seokmin’s face is wet with sympathetic tears. Mingyu’s gone suspiciously shiny-eyed, too. Seungcheol — Seungcheol has to leave. He needs to get out of this room, away from the things that have been said in it.

-

The baby.

-

Jeonghan’s been struggling to give up smoking for months. He’s succeeded, as far as Seungcheol knows: he hasn’t seen a nicotine patch on him since before Japan. Jeonghan’s not loud about caring for people, the way Seungkwan is. He’s quiet. It’s in the things he does for others, almost hoping they won’t notice. It’s the patches, and the pills he’s been taking.

Seungcheol had looked in his overnight bag once, curious about them, and found a blister-pack of tablets that he’d had to look up later on Naver. Clomiphene. He’d also found a bottle with a label featuring a small half-heart nestled inside a larger one. Prenatal care, the tag on that under the brand name had beamed. With high quality! Added Vitamin D support.

That’s real. So was the passion in Jeonghan’s voice when he’d told Joshua it was what he wanted. But the anger had been real, too, the way Jeonghan had rubbed what they were doing in the face of anyone connected with the company.

Look, it had been like he was saying. Look at me fucking one of the members, just like you never wanted. You want it now, so make it easy for me. Pick me up, drop me off. Hide it if you want, but I’m not going to bother. Run around after me, put me and the guy I’m fucking in the same hotel room and smile about it. Everything you never wanted, that’s what’s happening, and you’ll thank me for doing it.

A revenge tour, ten years late. A revenge come too late, cold and dry. The manager who had been the worst about Jeonghan’s C-status left the company years ago. Even the CEO is new, a Hybe appointment. The staff around them these days are mostly their own people, hand-picked and professional, friendly, sometimes even actual friends after so long. The balance of power had started to shift even before their contract renegotiations: their staff work for them now, or even with them.

If he had known that it was the last time, when they got back from Japan, would Seungcheol have done anything differently? Kissed Jeonghan harder, or softer; ignored the tension in his body and put his mouth on his cunt, eaten him out properly? He’d wanted to, but Joshua’s right about one thing: he does what Jeonghan wants, and not what he doesn’t.

That’s never been a problem before. Jeonghan has never asked him to do anything that would really hurt or embarrass him. It’s the little game they’ve played all these years. Show me that you care about me, Jeonghan will demand, and Seungcheol will do it. He’ll buy Jeonghan dinner; he’ll let Jeonghan steal his clothes and make them his. He’ll buy Jeonghan whatever he asks for, and watch him post about it. There’s no sting to it, only a pleased glow at having done well, been good enough that Jeonghan wants to show it off.

Seungcheol hasn’t had that many real girlfriends. He’d had one as a trainee, which was a stupid time to try to date like a normal person, but also the last time idols could date like normal people. His girlfriend back then hadn’t been that interested in his budding career — it wasn’t like he was at SM — but she’d started getting annoyed about the way it took all his time, all his attention. She’d felt he wasn’t serious enough about her, and she’d been right.

His next girlfriend had been more supportive. They’d dated nearly two years, and she’d understood what she was signing up for: they’d released their third album by the time he’d met her. She’d had long hair dyed chestnut, shining copper in the sun. Jeonghan’s hair had been silver-blond by then, cut around his ears. It hadn’t been related.

Jeonghan has never introduced a girlfriend or a boyfriend to them. He was private, Seungcheol used to think; if it was men he liked, maybe he was still too wary to say or do anything open about it the first few years, the way Joshua and Seungkwan had been. Soonyoung had had a boyfriend in the early years, but Soonyoung even then was supremely confident, easy in himself.

And it was harder for carriers; Seungcheol knew that too. Especially once Seventeen started getting well-known, once people recognised them, once gossip about if they dated and who they dated became common forum fare and the debate about whether Jeonghan was C-status or not became fierce. It was hard to trust people, even within the circles of friends and friends of friends that most of them limited their romantic options to.

The baby. That was what had made Jeonghan take Seungcheol’s hand and press it against his skin; a goal that, once achieved, made him lean away from Seungcheol’s kiss in the Hybe building corridor, say I don’t think you should do that anymore.

-

The baby.

-

Jeonghan’s nine weeks when they leave for France. He’s blond now, a look the stylists have been wanting to try out on him for months. Seungcheol looks at him and doesn’t recognise the person he’s been sleeping with since March, like another line’s been drawn.

Can you bleach your hair when pregnant, he asks Naver, which tells him yes, it’s fine, and no, it’s terrible, and also maybe, it depends.

Whatever their feelings, they’re all careful of Jeonghan at the airport, trying to keep him in the middle of the pack. The crush isn’t too bad, but Mingyu puts his arm around Jeonghan’s shoulders and glares at anyone who presses too close or thrusts a phone too near, bristling.

-

Paris is new for Seungcheol. The rest of them have been to Paris before without him. That trip isn’t even that high on the list of things he missed out on because of his knee, but now it feels like something coming right to get another chance at it: to look serious and then throw finger hearts at UNESCO, to eat pastries and pose in front of the Eiffel Tower.

In Paris, their staff hand out room keys, “Jeonghan-ssi, Scoups-ssi,” their names bracketed together again.

No reaction from the others this time, but Seungcheol looks at Jeonghan, wide-eyed, and Jeonghan looks back. Neither of them says anything.

In the room they’re sharing, later, Seungcheol says, a tone in his voice he can’t help, “I thought we weren’t doing this anymore?”

“They know I’m pregnant,” Jeonghan says. “There’s no reason to put us in the same room any longer, I don’t know why they did.” He looks tired, still half a stranger with his new hair. Without makeup, his face is usually a soft, pretty pale brown: the blond washes him out. “Do you want to ask for another room?”

“I don’t care. You can, if you want.”

“Fine,” Jeonghan says, clipped. “I need to sleep.”

“Don’t you need to eat something first?”

“There’s food in my bag.”

In his bag there’s a sleeve of plain rice crackers, two cans of Chilsung Cider, and a bag of ginger sweets.

“I’m sick in the evenings now,” Jeonghan says. “Maybe it’s mornings over here, I don’t know yet.” He sighs. “Everything’s made with butter. I want juk.”

“Now?”

“I’ll ask the staff. Don’t worry about it.”

-

Most of the Korean — Coréen — places in Paris are barbecue places; one Seungcheol can find on his phone makes jatjuk. He’d been thinking dakjuk or plain ssaljuk, but Jeonghan will probably be okay with jatjuk; it’s healthy, it’s not too strongly flavoured. Does Mingyu think it’ll be okay?

Mingyu, in a navy button-up he’s strategically buttoned down along his chest and rolled up at the sleeves, and a pair of very expensive sunglasses, is not having the evening in Paris he expected to have, but he says, supportively, “I’m sure it’s fine, hyung.” Their driver takes them into the Fifteenth Arrondissement for the juk. The ajumma who brings it out to the car doesn’t seem to recognise Seungcheol, but Mingyu cringes back into the shadows anyway, in case he’s so handsome he causes her alarm.

Jeonghan’s drowsing when Seungcheol brings him the juk. “Hey,” he whispers. “Jeonghan-ah. Wake up.”

“I don’t want to,” Jeonghan says into his pillow, but he changes his mind when Seungcheol tells him he’s brought him dinner. He twists onto his side and his eyes catch on Seungcheol’s, dark and wordless.

-

Their next block of free time sees Jeonghan posting a string of photos in Paris, out with Seokmin: Jeonghan blond and barefaced in black, Jeonghan’s profile against the European street. Jeonghan with an iced Americano and his favourite bracelet on his wrist, Seokmin’s backwards hat and many-toothed grin in the background.

Seungcheol stares at his cheekbones, the dark calligraphy strokes of his eyebrows and eyelashes, the smooth yellow hair. He searches: caffeine pregnancy bad?

“He looks good,” Seungkwan comments over his shoulder. “He’s still pretty sick, though.”

Seungcheol jolts, closing his phone.

“I wasn’t sure if you knew. You didn’t come over the past few weeks.”

“He didn’t ask me to.”

An unimpressed noise. “So? Show up anyway. I’ll let you in, if he won’t.”

-

In Bath, Jeonghan doesn’t ask for another room. Seungcheol doesn’t say anything about it. There’s no point making a thing out of sharing a bed. They have Glastonbury ahead of them, and the other members have been distracted enough by their personal issues over the past few weeks. Seungkwan and maybe Joshua are the only ones who know they’re not sleeping together any longer, and it’s not the time to mention it. Soonyoung might actually kill Seungcheol with his bare hands if he ruins their focus for the Pyramid Stage, and no one will stop him. It’s too big: not just in terms of the crowd, but in terms of what it means for them. For their whole industry, Jihoon says.

Jeonghan’s health is something they’re all keeping an eye on, as much a part of the logistics as the size of the stage. He makes an effort the night before Glastonbury: eats dinner, keeps drinking water without complaining about the taste. In the morning he’s as tightly focused as any of them as they run over the logistics yet again. This isn’t their show; they have no real control, no room for anything to go wrong, but all the blame if something does.

It’s a strange place to be in, aware that the vast majority of the actual audience won’t be there for them, may not have even heard of them; equally aware that a wider one is watching, waiting to see how this goes.

On the bus, they’re all too wound up to joke as much as they normally do. Minghao looks peaceful, but that probably means he’s running through a meditation in his head. Seokmin keeps opening his mouth to sing, then catching himself after a few bars. Hansol has his headphones on, his eyes closed.

As soon as they arrive, there’s a photographer there to embed with them. “Rock and roll, baby,” Joshua says in English.

-

Shot: Seungcheol climbing down first from the bus, squinting into the distance.

Shot: Soonyoung sitting backstage, bent over his phone, running through the last notes.

Shot: Jeonghan in front of the mirror, getting his hair blown out, his eyes closed.

Shot: An image of them taken from the sidestage, surrounded by smoke from the cannons; on beat, in synch. The arch of the stage, the pale afternoon sky. The crowd.

-

Some of the members go clubbing afterwards. Seungcheol thinks about it, then about his knee. He feels old, the way he has to think about his aches and pains, the way his idea of a good celebration is a beer at the hotel bar with a few of the members, then an ice-pack and a soft bed and maybe to smell Jeonghan’s hair.

“You could have gone out,” Jeonghan says. “I don’t care.”

They fall asleep without touching, and Seungcheol dreams that there’s an octopus in Jeonghan’s belly, perfectly formed, exquisitely detailed, every tiny sucker like a polished ruby. Its limbs coil and twist in the darkness. When he wakes up, Jeonghan’s pressed against his back, his face buried in the curve of Seungcheol’s neck.

-

“Did you sleep well, Hannie?” Joshua asks the next morning. “You’re looking better.”

Jeonghan shrugs. “I want to be home.” He runs a jaundiced eye over the hotel buffet breakfast. “I want real food.”

There’s been no more fighting between Joshua and Jeonghan in public; Joshua’s almost solicitous. Seungkwan’s still a little mad at Jeonghan about the pregnancy – perhaps less about the fact of it than the secrecy of it – the way he’s still a little mad at Seungcheol. He’d gone to bat for them, been the member who knew the most about what was going on, and they hadn’t told him the important part. Mingyu has worked through a loud spectrum of emotions, but settled on warm support.

It’s the quiet ones Seungcheol worries about. He knows that Minghao’s opinion hasn’t changed: he’s slightly incredulous at the situation, but it’s what Jeonghan wants, enough to fight for it, so: okay. Wonwoo has barely said anything, but he logged onto Discord before they left for Europe, and they’d gamed together without any tension.

Hansol and Chan would rather not be drawn into giving their opinions. Jun is quiet, but not in a way that suggests trouble.

He’s not sure about Seokmin, but he thinks he’d know by now if he was angry. It’s Soonyoung and Jihoon that worry him. Everything has been put aside for later while they focused on Glastonbury. There’s been too much else that’s important, immediate: the problem of Jeonghan’s pregnancy could wait.

When they get home, though, there’ll be nothing major on the schedule until Caratland, a month away; Berlin, a month after that. Jeonghan will be thirteen weeks at Caratland, into the second trimester. Nearly twenty by Berlin.

“Stop glaring at your phone,” Mingyu says, and Seungcheol closes his calendar quickly. “What, does it owe you money?”

“Shut up,” Seungcheol says, and kicks him under the breakfast table, and they nudge each other back and forth until the table shakes and Joshua says, “Come on, I’m eating here.”

“Barely,” Minghao says, looking at his dry toast with prejudice.

-

His life is a train speeding by so fast that he can feel the rush of displaced air on his face, but it won’t stop at the station to let him on.

Back in Seoul, Seungcheol works out every night, late, to the kind of sad music he wouldn’t want to let anyone know he was listening to. His brother tries to talk to him clumsily about his ‘special someone.’ He plays League of Legends and even manages to rank up to silver.

The early preparation for their October comeback has started, a comeback that Jeonghan won’t be involved in.

Jihoon says, “The timing on this isn’t good, you know.”

“It wasn’t my idea,” Seungcheol says defensively. Then, “He wasn’t going to be doing the comeback or on the US tour anyway.”

Jihoon hums to himself, his face flushed and damp. They’re resting together after a set. In the gym mirrors, Seungcheol can see the edge of his surgical scar peeking out from the hem of his shorts, snaking up his knee. “You know Wonwoo and Soonyoung still have to go next year.”

Seungcheol doesn’t say anything.

“So will I.”

“I know.”

“If that’s what you were thinking.”

“Didn’t you hear Shua? I wasn’t thinking.”

-

I have a scan next week, Jeonghan messages him.

Seungcheol sends back a thumbs up.

He knows Jeonghan’s comment is an offer, a neutral one, one that Seungcheol is supposed to turn into an invitation. I don’t really care, but come if you want, it seems to say. Jeonghan is capable of asking him to come directly if he wants Seungcheol to come.

He stares at his phone for a while, waiting.

There’s no follow-up.

It feels like losing a war with himself, but he messages Jeonghan. When?

-

He’s early to pick Jeonghan up: so early that he’s caught leaning against the lobby wall of Jeonghan’s building by Seungkwan turning up after a pick-up game somewhere, nattily sportive in his shorts and mid-calf socks. He stops when he sees Seungcheol.

He’s dressed up: it’s stupid of him. He’s dressed the way he knows Jeonghan likes him, like they’re going out to dinner: a button-up, a few buttons open, short-sleeved so the breadth of his upper arms shows. His Piguet, on his wrist. No cologne, because Jeonghan says it makes him sick right now. He’d said it to Chan and Mingyu when they were on the plane to Paris, forebodingly, wrinkling his nose at the cloud of sandalwood Mingyu was about to release before they deplaned.

“Oh, hyung,” Seungkwan says, pityingly.

Jeonghan’s lying on the couch in the dorm when they make it upstairs. His bleached hair is almost the same colour as it is in the portraits on the wall, collapsing time and space together.

His hand is on his belly, though at eleven, nearly twelve weeks, Seungcheol’s not sure there’s anything to see or feel yet. He jerks it away when he sees Seungcheol, struggling up from the cushions like he’s been caught.

Seungkwan says, brightly, “Well, I’m going to shower. I’ll leave you to it.”

“Yah, you need one,” Jeonghan shouts after him. A door slams down the hall. Then, “You’re early, Coups-ah. You were supposed to message.”

Seungcheol shrugs. “Seungkwannie let me in. Are you ready?”

-

They don’t really talk in the car. Jeonghan is wearing sunglasses, a dark jacket, not dressed up, but a few notches above his usual not-working wardrobe. He gives Seungcheol the address, watches him program it in, then spends an inordinate amount of time fussing with the settings on the passenger seat.

The silence on the ride to the clinic makes Seungcheol remember that drive after they had the discussion with the CEO, Jeonghan’s fury at the suggestion; at himself, for wanting to agree. To participate in the weaponisation of his C-status, a knife always turned against him. Seungcheol hadn’t known what was going through Jeonghan’s head then: he had felt the seething heat of his thoughts but not been able to guess at the shape of them. He doesn’t have any better guesses now. Whatever Jeonghan is thinking or feeling is behind glass, tamped down.

-

He’d been expecting the doctor to run the ultrasound over Jeonghan’s stomach, like in the dramas. Instead, after Jeonghan rattles off his identifying information, gunfire-rapid, name, date of birth, address, the technician tells him to undress behind a paper curtain. Shoes, pants, underwear. A paper covering spread across his lap. His feet look funny in the stirrups of the examination chair, slim calves and bony ankles concluding in his slightly shabby socks.

Seungcheol sits next to him, trying not to look at the probe all set up next to the computer screen; vaguely phallic, already sheathed in a condom, a dollop of lube gleaming on the head. It’s something they’d laugh over, normally, sniggering, making faces at each other. It’s the kind of thing guaranteed to make Jeonghan laugh.

He’s not laughing right now.

“It’s okay, Jeonghan-ah,” Seungcheol says. It’s not the right thing, but it makes Jeonghan stop staring at the ceiling for a moment, breathe out harshly through his nose like a shrug.

When the doctor comes in, she’s very nice; pink scrubs, a soft voice, short dark hair. She says hello to Jeonghan like they’re already familiar, and then greets Seungcheol. “Ah, it’s good to meet Jeonghan-ssi’s partner.”

Jeonghan doesn’t correct her, so Seungcheol doesn’t either.

“Knees a bit further apart, Jeonghan-ssi,” she says, adjusting one of the stirrups. “The gel will be cold.”

The doctor’s hand moves under the paper apron: Jeonghan winces, his face pinching.

On the computer screen beside the bed, the blackness blossoms: whites and greys, subterranean shapes. A throbbing sound. Whooshing, underwater, regular.

“That’s the heartbeat,” the doctor says. “Everything sounds good. Last time I showed you the gestational sac, Jeonghan-ssi, but it’s been four weeks, so there’s more to see.”

Seungcheol swallows. The underwater sounds continue, alien, too fast. “Is it okay?” he asks. “It’s so —”

“Perfectly normal,” the doctor tells him. “I’m just going to use a bit of pressure, Jeonghan-ssi, is that all right?”

Jeonghan nods. His hand flutters by his side; Seungcheol grabs it.

“There,” she says, and the grey shapes resolve into sudden clarity. An outline: the head, the curl of the body, the shape of forehead and nose and chin, recognisably human. The doctor starts calmly pointing out its features, measuring its size, checking the attachment of the placenta, perfectly normal, perfectly normal, perfectly normal, and Jeonghan’s coiled tension releases.

Seungcheol stops thinking about Jeonghan. He stops thinking about himself, his pain and rejection and resentment. His vision blurs, and he blinks quickly, not wanting to let the wetness obscure the black and white image on the screen.

He feels like he’s been shot; like he’s in one of those dramas where everything slows down, and the music stops, and the character looks down at his stomach, pulls his hand away from it, stares at the blood like he’s never seen it before. Then the camera moves to his hand, which has gone lax on his gun, his fingers opening. The gun falls, slowly, slowly, suspended in time, and lands at his feet, bounces, settles.

He’s still holding Jeonghan’s hand, and he squeezes it reflexively while Jeonghan and the doctor talk; about weight gain, about the next screening.

“It’s still difficult to tell. I can give you a definite answer after we run the genetic testing.”

“But if you had to speculate,” Jeonghan presses.

The doctor smiles, shaking her head: another person under Yoon Jeonghan’s spell, helpless not to indulge him. “I would guess a little girl,” she says.

Jeonghan nods. Seungcheol is crying properly now. The gun has landed, bounced, thudded again to a final stop. On the screen the baby shifts a little, the angle changing as the probe moves.

-

They get print-outs to take home, black and white images that are less dimensional than the computer screen. “I’m going to put it on the wall with the family portraits,” Jeonghan says. “Seungkwannie will hate it. It looks like a lizard.”

“It doesn’t.”

“Seungcheollie,” Jeonghan says, tone changing. “Ah, you’re crying again.”

Seungcheol sniffs. “A little girl.”

Jeonghan sighs. “Maybe,” he says. “Seonsaeng-nim’s not sure yet. Maybe.”

“It’s real.”

“Oh, it’s very real. I’m still sick in the evenings. Seonsaeng-nim says that that should stop soon, but with my luck, it won’t.”

“I should’ve — you’re feeling okay? The baby’s okay?”

“You saw it. It’s fine.”

“Should we buy a crib? What will she need?”

“Don’t worry about it.”

“It’s my baby, too,” Seungcheol says. “Of course I’m worried.”

The word still feels wrong, but he’s had a hole punched through him, and everything is leaking out now, all mixed up: blood and love and shock, resentment streaming away. The word is the same shape as the hole. Pregnancy had been easier to say or to think. Jeonghan was pregnant: Jeonghan was in a special condition. Baby made claims on the future, impossible, irreconcilable.

But he’s seen it now. He’s seen her: already in existence, not something yet to come. The perfect shape of her nose. The sound of her heart, pulsing in Jeonghan’s belly, where she’s nestled deep in the secret core of him.

“You don’t have to do anything,” Jeonghan says. They’re still sitting in the car together, in the carpark of the clinic. Seungcheol hasn’t started the car yet. He glances down at his lap. “You’ve done enough. Don’t you think so?”

Seungcheol swallows. “I want to do more.”

“Like what,” Jeonghan asks. “What do you actually want, Choi Seungcheol? Do you even know?”

“It wasn’t real before,” Seungcheol says. “I wasn’t —”

Jeonghan breathes out. “Let’s go home,” he says.

-

Seungcheol nearly doesn’t follow him up to the dorm. It’s not clear that Jeonghan wants him to, and the line of his back and the set of his shoulders say danger, danger. But if he doesn’t go up, if he drives away and lets it go for now, he has a feeling another door will seal closed against him, that there’ll be a further retreat into the snail-shell. He has his thumbnail wedged in the crack, and he can’t give up.

When he walks in, Jeonghan is already looming over Seungkwan. “Look at the head,” he demands, pushing the ultrasound picture at him. “Look how big it is! Its ears are in the right place now, but the tail is gone. Ah, such a shame.”

Seungkwan takes the picture reluctantly, but then his face softens. “Oh, it’s cute.”

“As expected.”

“I’m expecting you to give birth to a tadpole,” Seungkwan says, and Jeonghan laughs.

“That’s what we’ve been calling it,” he tells Seungcheol over his shoulder. “Olchaeng-ie.” He hums. Ggomul ggomul hae umchi da. “But I can’t feel it moving yet.”

Seungcheol sniffs. He can feel Seungkwan’s gaze move to him, taking in his pink face, his swollen eyes. He wants to complain that he didn’t get to pick the taemyeong name, but he’s been playing a stupid game for the past few weeks, waiting for Jeonghan to come to him, refusing to go to him. Curled up brooding over his rejection.

In Jeonghan’s bedroom, little has changed. Seungcheol’s not sure where he thinks he’s going to put a baby. There’s barely room for a crib, much less for the rest of what a baby needs. Seungcheol needs to start making lists, to start figuring it all out. The curtains are drawn; Jeonghan flicks on the light. The energy that had animated him in the living room is slipping away. “You should think more about it,” he tells Seungcheol quietly. “You don’t have to decide now.”

“I’m not going to change my mind.”

“Sure,” Jeonghan says. He shrugs his jacket off, unclips his sunglasses from where they’re hooked in the neckline of his t-shirt. Seungcheol’s eyes go to his stomach, imperceptible through the fabric.

“Can I see?”

“There’s nothing to see yet, Coups-ah,” Jeonghan says, but he unfastens his pants, pulling his shirt up under his arms. He hasn’t been naked with Seungcheol since that last time, even on tour. His hipbones are still knife-sharp. His nipples look darker.

If Seungcheol didn’t know he was pregnant, he wouldn’t guess he was. He might think he’d had a big lunch, or skipped a few weeks at the gym. But he knows Jeonghan’s body, the sharp lines of his clavicle, the tendons in his throat. After the first few years, he’s stayed a little soft in the stomach, slim but not toned in a way that makes Seungcheol feel insane whenever he gets to see it.

Below Jeonghan’s navel, there’s a faint swell now, just above his pubic bone. If he wasn’t so thin it probably wouldn’t show, but there it is, as real as the image on the screen.

“Can I,” Seungcheol says, but he’s already settling his hand on Jeonghan’s lower belly. He’s so warm. Seungcheol rubs gently with his fingertips, feeling for the shape under his skin, pressing down. Finally he settles the heel of his palm against Jeonghan’s abdomen, letting his hand rest there, curved over the curve of his uterus.

“See,” Jeonghan says. “You can’t feel anything. I told you, I can’t tell when she’s moving.”

“You’ll let me feel when you do?” Seungcheol asks. “I want to feel her.”

“If you want.” Jeonghan’s stomach flexes a little under his hand. “You don’t have to.”

“I want to.” They’ve had this exchange already. He doesn’t know what to say to make Jeonghan accept he’s serious. He sniffs again. “I want to, Jeonghan-ah. Don’t you think I’ll be good at it?”

“At what?”

“Being her dad,” Seungcheol says. “I want to be her dad.”

“Cheollie,” Jeonghan says. He puts his hand over Seungcheol’s, presses them together against his stomach. “Of course you’ll be a good dad. You spoil your dog like a baby already, ah. When you get married, when it’s the right time, you’ll have all the babies you want, and you’ll spoil them so much, their poor eomma will have to do all the discipline.”

“If you don’t want me to be involved, Jeonghan-ah, say so.”

“That’s not what I’m saying,” Jeonghan says. He lets go of Seungcheol’s hand and pushes it away, pulling his shirt back down. “I’m tired, Coups-ah. I need to rest.”

“I mean it,” Seungcheol says, but Jeonghan’s already crawling into bed, closing his eyes.

It’s a transparently clear order to leave. Seungcheol backs out of the room, turning the light off for Jeonghan before he does.

-

He messages Jeonghan in the morning. How are you today? Let me know. And again, at midday: are you doing okay? In the afternoon: I read the baby is the size of a fig.

-

“Do you think I’ll be a good father?” he asks.

Mingyu says, “Of course, hyung.”

“Jeonghannie doesn’t.”

“He chose to have a baby with you.”

“He chose to have a baby,” Seungcheol says. “I don’t think he wants me to be involved.”

Mingyu looks like a child hearing that his parents are fighting. “Ah, he’s just being difficult. You know what Jeonghan-hyung’s like. Do you want to see what the baby will look like? I put your faces in an app to find out, and it’s in the chat now, look.”

-

Fine, Jeonghan replies. Still fine. Then, I thought it was a lime kekeke.

-

He brings dinner over to Jeonghan’s dorm. Jeonghan says, “You don’t have to try so hard, Seungcheollie,” but he eats the dakjuk, after complaining that everything tastes metallic to him right now. He finishes the first bowl, though, then lets Seungcheol add more. They talk a little about the upcoming comeback. Jeonghan doesn’t seem upset about sitting it out. He should be back by the next one, he says. April, probably.

“That doesn’t give you a lot of time to recover,” Seungcheol says. “You don’t know yet how much time you’ll need.”

“I’ll want to be back,” Jeonghan says. He sighs, rotating his shoulder. “Caratland should be fun. The stylists are putting me in big shirts. They want to put some colour in my hair.”

“Is that safe?”

“It’s a special dye. Don’t worry, it’s not even going on my scalp, just the ends. It’s a surprise.”

He’s still favouring his shoulder, the one he hurt in May. The injury’s about as old as the pregnancy. “I can rub it for you,” Seungcheol offers, and Jeonghan makes a face. “It’s sore,” he says. “Be careful.”

He is; so gentle that Jeonghan sighs again. “Harder, Coups-ah,” he says. “Just there.”

-

The genetic tests come back clear, the gender confirmed: a girl, as expected.

We’ll call her Jisoo, Jeonghan says in the groupchat, kekeke, and is immediately dogpiled by demands to be serious, hyung, or offers to be her namesake instead.

Joshua says, simply, No. Then, Congratulations, though.

-

Joshua and Seungcheol haven’t really talked since Jeonghan told the members he was pregnant, not one on one. They’ve performed together, worked together, smiled together for content.

“A little girl, huh,” Joshua says. “That’s what you were hoping for?”

Seungcheol shrugs. He hadn’t thought about it, really, until the scan. He hadn’t thought about the shape of what he wanted until it was already there.

“I bet Hannie’s pleased.”

Is he?

“Come back to my place,” Joshua says. “Let’s have a chat.”

There’s something slightly threatening about being invited back to Joshua’s. He was one of the first to move out of the dorms, and his apartment is punctiliously, painfully neat. Everything matches: the floor lamp in alabaster and gold, the thick white rug, the cream-coloured sofa. The tasteful arrangement of objects on the coffee table, the glossy books Joshua wants people to think he’s read. There’s a bonsai on the table that Seungcheol is fairly sure has been replaced several times, each dried-up juniper corpse being switched out for a fresh one.

“You want a drink?” Joshua says. “I won’t tell him.”

“Jeonghan doesn’t care.”

Joshua makes a noise of polite scepticism. “Sure he doesn’t,” he says. “That sounds like him.” He has several bottles of wine chilling inside his fridge door, and he pauses over selecting one. “This one’s from Italy.”

“From one of the wineyards you went to?”

“Nearby,” Joshua says, uncorking it, pouring it into glasses. He hands one to Seungcheol. “It’s a good region, especially for Sangiovese. I got my wine merchant to order some vintages in for me. This is a Montepulciano.”

Seungcheol imagines spilling the wine on Joshua’s perfect sofa. His wrist trembles, the thought father to the action.

Joshua says, “Careful,” and clinks their glasses together. “Saluti.”

Seungcheol huffs. “Geonbae.”

“I’ve been feeling really shitty about what I said.”

“Oh?”

“I was upset,” Joshua says. “It’s not an excuse, but I was worried for Hannie. He gets in his head about the carrier thing, and they use it against him. They always have. I didn’t want them to manipulate him into this. I’m still not totally sure they didn’t, if I’m being honest.”

“They tried to, but it was his decision in the end.”

“Yours, too.”

“I thought I just did what Jeonghan told me?”

“I was upset. I don’t really think you’re stupid.”

“No, you just think I do whatever he wants.”

“Cheollie,” Joshua says, softly incredulous. “Come on. Are you going to pretend you don’t?”

A hot flush of shame overwhelms him, ears and cheeks: a sick twist in his stomach. “It’s not — I don’t do anything I don’t really want to do. He asks for things I don’t mind doing.”

“Hannie asks for things, and you give them to him,” Joshua says. “That’s how you guys work. I’m not judging you for it, I’m just — sometimes you shouldn’t give him everything, you know? There are things it’s not okay to ask for, or it’s not a good idea to give.”

Seungcheol looks down at his glass, jaw clenching. “You must think I’m so pathetic.”

They’ve never seriously talked about it before, the thing between him and Jeonghan. There were years of jokes, long before Seungcheol had ever kissed him; date night when they went out together for chicken and beer or for something fancier. Whipped, whenever Jeonghan flaunted his power, showing off what Seungcheol had done for him, what he would do for him. Edgeless teasing, the kind that made Seungcheol blush and sometimes yell, nothing that actually hurt. Edged, now.

“Not pathetic. I think — I’m trying to make up with you, Cheollie, not piss you off further.”

“You should say it.”

“I think you care a lot about him,” Joshua says, carefully. “I think that’s why you’d do a lot for him, and that’s why I think it’s a problem that he asked you for this.”

“I still made my own decision,” Seungcheol says. “It’s not your business, Shua.”

“Yeah, that’s what he said.”

“You talked to him about this?”

“After we got back from the UK,” Joshua says. His voice lilts up in exasperation. “He shut me down. He’s such a pain in the ass when he wants to be. I told him he had to be more fair to you.”

“Shua,” Seungcheol says again. He runs his hand through his hair and wants to curse.

“I care about you both,” Joshua says. It’s hard to be angry at him when he’s earnest like this, all round dark eyes and floppy bangs. His imported wine and his marble paperweights. He really means what he’s saying. “You know? He’s not good with being vulnerable, Hannie. He’s so — it’s hard for him. It always has been.”

“Is it any better for carriers in America?”

Joshua sighs. “In some ways,” he says. “In some places. Not everywhere. It’s still hard. I used to think it was really good, that he would actually ask you for things.”

He takes a sip of wine, swirling it around his cheeks like he’s trying to form an opinion. “Cherry,” he says, when Seungcheol asks for his tasting notes. “Plum. Oak. I don’t know, that’s what you’re supposed to say about red wine, right?”

-

Jeonghan will be twelve weeks in a few days. The baby will be the size of a plum, turning over in his belly and stretching out tiny arms and legs.

-

He doesn’t make it to Jeonghan’s dorm until late. He expects Jeonghan to already be in bed, but instead he finds Seungkwan, Jeonghan and Soonyoung in the living room, wearing face masks. Soonyoung is the only one not in pyjamas, and through the eye- and mouth-holes of the mask he looks red. Alcohol-flushed, it becomes obvious, when he stands up and then collapses to the floor in a bow to Seungcheol.

“I’m sorry!” he wails. “I’m sorry I was mad at you, Coups-hyung!”

“It’s okay,” Seungcheol says, then “Ah, get up, come on,” as Soonyoung clutches him around the knees, hiccuping with emotion.

“He brought Jeonghan-hyung a present,” Seungkwan says, and gestures to a very small tiger-printed garment, splayed across part of the couch in a pile of wrapping paper.

“It has ears,” Jeonghan says.

Soonyoung whispers, “Step on my face, Coups-hyung, I deserve it.”

“Come up here, Soonyoung-ah,” he says, hugging him back when Soonyoung clutches him around the waist and puts his face down on his shoulder. “What happened?”

“I put the ultrasound in the group chat,” Jeonghan says. “I think Soonyoungie was already drinking, but he came around with that” — a gesture at the onesie — “and tried to bribe me into forgiveness. Silly,” he coos, focusing on Soonyoung. “Like I could be mad at you, Hoshi-yah.”

Soonyoung hiccups into Seungcheol’s ear.

Seungcheol pats his head. “Put him to bed on the couch when he’s ready, Seungkwan-ah. I have to talk to Jeonghan.”

Seungkwan grumbles, but he accepts his armful of Soonyoung without a real complaint.

Jeonghan insists on going to the bathroom first so that he can take his mask off. He rubs the remaining moisture into his face, and it’s a gleaming set of features he turns on Seungcheol, pink and shining and slightly viscous. “You’re wearing a lip stain,” he says, looking Seungcheol over in turn.

“I was drinking wine with Shua.”

Jeonghan clicks his tongue. “So I have two drunks showing up at my door tonight.”

“I’m not drunk,” Seungcheol says. “But I needed to talk to you.”

“It can’t wait until you’re sober?” Jeonghan asks. He fills up a glass under the faucet. “Drink that. Show me your teeth — ah, red too. Brush them, Seungcheollie.”

Jeonghan takes things from hotels sometimes — nothing guests aren’t meant to use. Bottles of lotion, hair caps, small tubes of toothpaste, toothbrushes, little cellophane-wrapped sweets and packets of nuts. Anything he thinks might come in handy later, to stash around his person or in one of his large and bottomless bags. Seungcheol loves him.

He says so, and Jeonghan’s shiny face pinches. “Come to my room when you’re done,” he says.

Jeonghan’s room is a place they’ve been together. Seungcheol’s apartment is haunted by the ghost of Jeonghan on his couch, or standing shirtless in his living room, or pressed up against the kitchen counter with his hands on Seungcheol’s cheeks. His bathroom is where Jeonghan retched in the sink, the baby girl making her presence known; his bedroom is where they probably made her, where Jeonghan first took him, where Seungcheol made him cry with his mouth and his fingers. The wardrobe is where Jeonghan was standing a few days before he cut off what they were doing, Seungcheol’s watch heavy on his wrist and his eyes saying, are you going to fight me on this?

They’d been saying that in the hallway in the company building when he’d said it’s enough now, but Seungcheol hadn’t realised he was supposed to fight. That’s just not how they do things: Jeonghan says what he wants, and Seungcheol gives it to him.

“I was talking to Joshua,” Seungcheol starts, and Jeonghan makes a scoffing noise. He’s sitting on the side of his bed in one of his big shirts and a pair of sleep shorts.

“Yah, don’t do that.”

“He said he talked to you.”

“Hong Jisoo says a lot of things. Sometimes he’s even right.”

“He thinks you take advantage,” Seungcheol says. “Because you know how I feel about you. He told you that, and you stopped asking me for things. You didn’t want to involve me with the baby.”

“Sometimes he’s right,” Jeonghan says, and looks away. “I’m not fair to you.”

“I don’t want you to be fair to me. I want you to let me take care of you and the baby. I know you don’t — I know you don’t care about me the same way, but I still want to take care of you, Jeonghan-ah.”

Jeonghan makes a scoffing sound. “Joshua doesn’t know everything,” he says. “Neither do you. You think you love me, is that it?”

“I do love you—”

“You love all of us, Seungcheollie,” Jeonghan says, like he’s explaining basic facts to a child. “Of course you love me. You love Mingyu, you love Hansollie, you love Channie and Wonwoo. No one loves Seventeen as much as you do. You have us all inked on your skin and pressed into your heart: you love all of us. You want to fuck me, and you think that means you’re in love with me, but it’s not the same thing.”

“I’m in love with you,” Seungcheol says. “Jeonghan-ah—”

“I don’t even think you’d still want to fuck me if you hadn’t been ordered not to,” Jeonghan says. “You would have gotten over it years ago. I could always tell that you wanted to, but that’s not the same thing as wanting me properly, Choi Seungcheol. Not seriously, not for always, not if it wears off once you get it. So it’s not the same for us,” he says. “You’re right about that.”

“I want you, but I love you, too. I always have. Jeonghan-ah — I’ve been in love with you for years, you know that. Shua knows that, everyone knows that.”

“Joshua doesn’t know anything,” Jeonghan says, but he softens a little at whatever he sees on Seungcheol’s face. “Ah, Cheollie, come here.” He stands up, and Seungcheol walks into his arms.

“I love you,” Seungcheol says, damply. He’s crying; he doesn’t want to be, but he is. He doesn’t know how to say it any other way, how to make Jeonghan believe it. “Even if you don’t think I do, even if you never sleep with me again. I just want you.”

“And the baby. You’re forgetting about Olchaeng-ie.”

“And the baby,” Seungcheol says. He wants her now, too. He wants to see if she has Jeonghan’s eyes, Jeonghan’s funny fingers, his own ears. He wants to put bows in her hair and help her with her homework, though he already knows Jeonghan will be better at that part, more patient and more helpful.

“Greedy,” Jeonghan chides. Then he sighs. “It’s a big risk, liking someone. Too big. Even worse if you love them.”

Your knee, he’d said, sharply, when Seungcheol tried to press him down. After they’d ended it, Seungcheol had thought back over every position they’d ever fucked in and realised that each of them were carefully arranged to put no pressure on his injury, so smoothly he never noticed. Jeonghan’s quiet form of caring; sideways, secretive.

It’s not the same for us, he’d said, in the same breath as accusing Seungcheol of not loving him properly.

“It wouldn’t be a risk. If you did.”

Jeonghan glances away, then back. His expression is fragile. Seungcheol can’t see himself reflected properly in his eyes, but he can imagine how he looks: snotty, flushed, creased with misery. “You shouldn’t let Shua give you his fancy wine,” he says. “You’re still all red here.”

His thumb moves over Seungcheol’s bottom lip.

“I like your mouth,” Jeonghan whispers, like it’s a confession; like it’s been tortured out of him. “I like it so much.”

When he kisses Seungcheol, it’s soft, quiet, like all his most serious actions are, the giveaway ones. His hands come up to hold Seungcheol’s face.

-

“My knee’s stronger than it was in May,” Seungcheol pants, “if you want me to go on top –”

“Good, I was tired of doing all the work,” Jeonghan says, and laughs his hen’s cackle.

He makes a different sound entirely when Seungcheol puts his mouth to work. He should be good at this; he should have skills from ex-girlfriends to use on him, but it’s Jeonghan, who still has difficulty trusting Seungcheol with this, with letting himself have this. It’s Jeonghan, and Seungcheol has no finesse when it comes to him, only desperation, only shapeless need. Jeonghan meets him there, though, his fingers twisting in Seungcheol’s hair, and the stabs of pain in his scalp urge him on.

-

“I slept terribly,” Soonyoung informs them when they finally stumble out in the morning. Seungcheol hadn’t wanted to get up: he liked it too much, getting to hold a Jeonghan who was still all angles and sharp elbows but who would let Seungcheol play with his fingers and kiss him before they even brushed their teeth. A Jeonghan who wasn’t trying to get away until his stomach growled, anyway, and then he was pushing Seungcheol’s hand off his belly and struggling to his feet.

Soonyoung’s bleached hair is rucked all over his head, the perimeter of darkness at the roots apparent. He’s glaring.

“Oh?” Jeonghan asks airily. He’s wearing Seungcheol’s shirt. He takes a bottle of water from the fridge, screws the cap off, and sniffs at the mouth of it, before deeming it safe to drink. “Maybe you missed your own bed. I slept well.”

“You were loud,” Soonyoung says. “—Is that his Seventeen ring you’re wearing?” His eyes narrow further, then move, accusingly, to Seungcheol. “That’s so cheap. What, Jeonghan-hyung doesn’t deserve a real ring?”

-

[NOTICE] Information on SEVENTEEN’s JEONGHAN’s Activities in the Second Half of 2024
2024.07.30
Hello.
This is PLEDIS Entertainment.

We would like to provide information regarding SEVENTEEN member JEONGHAN’s current health status and his activities moving forward.

While preparing to fulfill his military obligations earlier this year, JEONGHAN undertook a standard medical assessment where he was graded 4C, and was expected to join the supplementary service in the second half of 2024. However, when the artist was performing at the recent SVT 8TH FAN MEETING concert, he started to feel unusual pain and fatigue. He immediately went to the hospital and was diagnosed by the medical staff as being in the early stages of pregnancy. This has automatically adjusted JEONGHAN’s military grade to 5C and initiated an enlistment exemption.

JEONGHAN is highly determined to attend all of the group’s prearranged engagements, though his participation may be changed depending on the circumstances. This is to ensure his health remains the top most priority as per recommendation of the medical staff.

We ask for your kind understanding and support for JEONGHAN at this time. Please continue to show your love for SEVENTEEN and stay tuned for SEVENTEEN’s upcoming activities this year.

Thank you.