Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

*****

Soobin has thought at times, in the privacy of his own head, that Yeonjun is like a sun the four of them are locked into orbit around. 

He gives them energy and purpose, provides them with a taste of his fiery passion for this life they share, but keeps them arranged exactly where they need to be to ensure they each shine on their own as well. 

If he's not their sun, then Yeonjun is the central melody to a beautiful harmony unlike anything else he's ever been part of or connected to…and he would never want to be anywhere else.

He will never tell him this little truth, though. That would be weird. The planets can never actually reach the sun, afterall. Just spinning, spinning perfectly in balance but never to touch.

A collision would be catastrophic. 

But being in Yeonjun's orbit means it's literally impossible to break free from his gravitational pull. It means not even wanting to.

Soobin never once imagined he'd ever even want to, until the day things went Wrong.

It's a normal, mundane, slow weekday like any other and Yeonjun is once again dressed up much too nicely—fashionably—to mean anything other than another Tiktok challenge or social media photo post.

He's in platform knee-high boots this time, with shorts so short they are almost hidden beneath his thigh-high flowy top, and the flash of lots of pale skin is what catches Soobin's attention from across the break room.

It's February and Yeonjun has no business exposing his legs if not for a specific reason, and as soon as he swans over to his intended target, Taehyun, Soobin knows exactly what he's here for.

He tries not to look, knowing he barely has time to finish streaming this episode before their next schedule begins, but like always Yeonjun takes up the air in the room and fills the comfortable quiet with his loud presence. Soobin sets his phone down with a sigh, knowing he can't focus until he's gone.

"Taehyun-ah, hyung needs you," Yeonjun purrs, dipping at the waist to cutely drop his face in the space between the younger's face and phone. 

His loose top billows out and around them nearly obscuring the smaller boy from view entirely.

"Not right now, I'm busy," Taehyun replies mildly without even looking up, just tilting his phone to the side and craning his neck to peer around the sudden intrusion.

"I can literally see the current browser on your phone right now. It can wait," Yeonjun retorts.

"So can your boredom photoshoot," Taehyun shoots back, leaning away again while batting ineffectively at the draping fabric as Yeonjun continues to encroach upon his space.

Yeonjun is supporting himself over Taehyun's seat with one hand on the back of the sofa, the muscles flexing visibly in the bare stretch of his toned thighs. Soobin doesn't mean to stare but Yeonjun doesn't seem particularly aware of the way his current outfit exposes all of his legs when he twists his body around further in an attempt to both irritate and convince Taehyun to do what he wants.

Or maybe he's very much aware since he purposefully dressed in that outfit. It is more likely that he's perfectly aware. Soobin still doesn't know how he pulls it off.

"Come on. You're the best at it, Taehyun-ah," Yeonjun praises, sugar sweet.

"Tell me something I don't know."

"I'm serious. No one else catches my vibe quite right," Yeonjun protests in a whiny voice. "And you're not busy! The natural light in the lounge will be gone after our lessons. It has to be now. Can't you spare hyung thirty minutes?"

"Empty flattery will get you nowhere. Go find someone else," Taehyun rejects firmly, not an ounce of weakness in his voice. "Now get out of my face, please."

Yeonjun draws back with an exaggerated pout, turning to scan the room's occupants for a second option. 

Over across the room two male staff members on the sofa lift their arms in big obvious x's, while over by the vanities a handful of make-up artists are too busy squabbling over the new merchandise to have even noticed the disturbance Yeonjun is making. 

Soobin holds perfectly still, trying not to obviously catch Yeonjun's eye but also trying to project availability. Not that Yeonjun ever asks Soobin to be his cameraman, but Soobin wouldn't mind just this once since Taehyun doesn't seem up for it. 

He's not actually busy. That’s all.

Yeonjun's gaze passes over him then snaps back to hold his eyes for a second. He frowns, then raises his eyebrows incredulously when Soobin shrugs.

"Absolutely not ," Yeonjun says loudly, widening his eyes pointedly as if telling Soobin to be quiet.

He hadn’t even said anything. 

Soobin sneers at him. Despite himself he's a little disgruntled by the favoritism—the unapologetic rejection—because Yeonjun always asks only Taehyun. It’s not the first time, far from it. It's perfectly fine that it's apparently become their 'thing', just the two of them, and Soobin really has no reason to be jealous. 

He was only trying to be nice because the natural light won't last, so there’s no need to make a big deal about it.

"I wasn't offering," he denies, deadpan, because he hadn't been. Not really. He'd just been— "your legs are just distracting."

Yeonjun's attention snaps back around to look at him with a scandalized expression. 

Where the hell did that come from? That's not what he meant to—

That's not what he was even thinking about even though Yeonjun obviously knows his legs are something to look at. That’s why he’s showing them off. If there's one thing to take away from this new outfit it's confirmation that Yeonjun will never shy away from flaunting the fact that he's sexy everywhere .

"It's a compliment," he says through a big, fake smile. 

"I said no, Soobin!" Yeonjun says, punctuating the words with a single raised finger as if admonishing a puppy. “Why are you complimenting me?” 

As if that’s not exactly what he’s incredibly eager to hear—just like a puppy. He’s ridiculous.

Behind him on the couch, Taehyun giggles and Soobin honestly can't tell if he's enjoying their squabbling or reacting to something on his phone.

"I’m only looking at those boots," he says quickly, rolling his eyes as he tries to downplay his increasingly weird responses. “I like them.”

He can’t tell if he sounds weird or if it’s all in his head. He’s feeling weird.

His ears have gone a little warm as he inadvertently digs himself deeper by mentioning the boots, but an unfounded compliment is really nothing to be embarrassed over. Especially since Yeonjun seems to think he's teasing.

It's only weird if he makes it weird. And he's not making it weird. 

They've been at this for years already. He knows how it's supposed to go. He's just saying what Yeonjun wants to hear. Why else would he come in here dressed like that?

"No, no. These wouldn't work for you at all, jagi," Yeonjun says snootily, sticking one leg out to affect a little pose that perfectly showcases the long long line of his slim legs accentuated by said boots. "Your thighs are too muscley."

Soobin means to reply to the diss on his legs, but he blanks for a moment as his eyes drag down by accident to take in the offered sight, remembering himself just a second later as Yeonjun promptly wiggles his hips. He’s so ridiculous!

He's quick to look back up at Yeonjun's face only to find him smirking back at him, eyes half-lidded and sharp.

Oh, now he’s sure. Yeonjun really is teasing him on purpose and the familiar sight helps him relax. He just came in here for attention and Soobin doesn't see why he shouldn't give it to him. Taehyun made it clear he's not in the mood.

"So what? You love my thighs," he says back, noticing with satisfaction the way Yeonjun’s eyes always seem to light up whenever Soobin plays along. Something about Yeonjun's attention always makes him stupidly bold, and just like always he's unable to resist poking at him. "I wouldn't wear those boots if you paid me, but I can sure appreciate them on you instead, hyung. Let me take your photos."

"I don't understand why you keep offering!" Yeonjun splutters, even though he looks delighted by Soobin's less than smooth attempts.

He carefully ensures his expression remains cool and collected, trying not to think beyond this moment just in case Yeonjun actually agrees. He already opened his mouth before he had a chance to consider the full implications of everything, but it’s not like Yeonjun will actually take him up on it, right? 

"I'm free and just wanna help you out, hyung. Where else would you find such a patient, helpful dongsaeng?” 

"No, you've never once…wait—are you teasing me right now?" 

He purses his lips and narrows his eyes. Soobin widens his own eyes innocently.

"I can't even tell what your angle is,” Yeonjun mutters, a slow smile growing on his lips. “But it’s about time you made yourself useful.”

“I’m very useful and not at all busy, so you’re in luck today,” Soobin says, lifting both hands to make a show of just how free he is. “My time is yours.”

Yeonjun giggles, expression shifting to flirty once more. He wiggles his eyebrows stupidly while biting down on his plump bottom lip because he’s unrelentingly ridiculous , and Soobin braces himself for the punchline because he knows he’s just woken the beast. A second later Yeonjun’s pink tongue playfully peeks out from one corner of his mouth as he makes eyes at him. Fuck…The tongue disappears back out of sight. 

“Ah…so you wanted to spend some one-on-one time with noona,” he simpers. “Why didn’t you just say so, baby?" 

Taehyun giggles again, peering over his shoulder to observe their flirty exchange with big sparkly eyes.

Soobin is sure now. He's definitely laughing at them.

All at once it feels like they’re making a scene, and his heart skips a beat as he registers how quiet the room has gone while he was all caught up in Yeonjun’s game. Mind racing for a proper comeback, Soobin sucks in a slow breath to ensure his heart remains steady, refusing to blush. 

This is nothing. Yeonjun isn’t even touching him right now. Even though Soobin has long built up iron-clad defenses against those sneaky fingers and lips, the scales always tip quickly into unfair when Yeonjun decides to use them. Yeonjun knows all his weak spots even though he tries his best to pretend it doesn’t affect him. It usually doesn’t. At least, not like it used to.

The staff members over by the wall are groaning a little less than discreetly from where they are sitting as if disgusted by their banter, and even if it holds no real animosity as everyone is more than used to Yeonjun's brand of flirty playfulness, something about the sound strikes him differently for some reason. 

The sudden realization that this silly conversation isn’t actually private makes him pause with his lips already parted around the beginnings of a flirty retort of his own. 

His eyes flicker over to the two men who aren’t looking at him but at…at Yeonjun’s legs , and Soobin's stomach slowly clenches up as he quickly reconsiders everything they’ve been saying. Everything they’ve been implying—and in front of male staff no less.

He is never usually so careless or inconsiderate of their surroundings, and Yeonjun's current outfit scrambling his brain is certainly not a valid excuse for him to disregard propriety and throw away his decency. His respect.

All at once the pleasant warmth that had been bubbling in his belly starts to burn.

"Nevermind,” he sniffs. “If that's how you're gonna be then I changed my mind.”

"Oh, my bad. I thought you needed an excuse for a chance to drool over my boots up close and personal. As long as you don't mind looking while I'm still in them, then I don't mind either."

Soobin cringes internally. Why would Yeonjun say that so loudly? Soobin doesn't know what the hell he was thinking when he decided to enter into this conversation. He clearly wasn’t thinking.

Why is Taehyun just sitting there laughing instead of putting a stop to it before it started getting inappropriate? He’s normally the first to catch a weird vibe before it can grow into something like this. Soobin doesn’t know how to make Yeonjun give it a rest except by cutting the whole thing off at the roots. He never should have indulged him from the very start.

One of the staff is staring so blatantly, eyes pinned on the way Yeonjun juts his hip out to one side seductively, while the other is making a face as if he finds Yeonjun’s display repulsive, and Soobin’s breath pinches in his chest. 

They need to stop .

"Whatever, they’re just boots,” he says dismissively, blood rushing through his ears. He can’t think. “I don’t want to help you anymore because you always expect people to drop everything the moment you need an audience. The world doesn't revolve around you, hyung,” Soobin scoffs. 

It comes out a lot more nastily than he’d intended, but Yeonjun’s back is to those men and he has no idea— 

Yeonjun pauses on a inhale, whatever words he was planning to say next never leaving his mouth. He stares at Soobin as if he needs extra time to process the words he just said—utterly thrown off—and even as they echo horribly in his own ears as well, he can’t take them back. Soobin is not sure the harsh tone can be written off as mere teasing, but he couldn't help it. He effectively got exactly what he intended out of it, and that’s all that matters. 

Those men are sitting close enough to hear every word they are saying, and he doesn't get why Yeonjun doesn’t filter himself in this setting. Why he’ll carelessly drag other people into his games regardless of who might be listening. 

Soobin was hardly better himself by encouraging him, which makes this all the more embarrassing and…inappropriate. 

“I never said it did,” Yeonjun finally says slowly, brows notching together a little as his eyes dart around Soobin’s face. 

He has lost the flirty playfulness, abruptly blank-faced and serious, and Soobin bites his lip regretfully. He hadn’t meant to say it like that. He’d just panicked or something. He wants to apologize for taking it too far, but he wants Yeonjun to get out of this room and away from them, so he seals his mouth shut. 

He’s so overly aware of those ears and eyes. The unwarranted, unwanted attention. It is unwanted, right? 

Yeonjun constantly craves eyes on him, wants to feel attractive and receive confirmation that he looks good, but there’s no way he’d appreciate or want the looks those staff were giving him. He always puts so much effort into becoming the center of attention, but sometimes he doesn’t seem to get it: that he already successfully achieved it. That sometimes he actually very much overdoes it.

He doesn’t seem to know that more often than not Soobin's world truly does seem to revolve entirely around Yeonjun.

Soobin was rude to put him off, but it would only throw them off further for him to take it back and give Yeonjun sincerity when he came in here fishing for superficial. 

“You suck at flirting,” Yeonjun eventually says with an unhappy little downturn to his lips, giving Soobin an easy out he doesn’t deserve. It makes him feel even guiltier until Yeonjun adds on, “This is precisely why I want anyone but you to assist me in my private modeling sessions." 

Soobin almost can't decide if he wants to pout to keep Yeonjun engaged or to actually let his genuine hurt show at that, because Yeonjun sounded serious and he's a little taken aback. He hadn't meant for- he hadn't meant to actually piss him off or hurt him, he's just uncomfortably aware of the staff present. 

Yeonjun should be aware of them too, even though it’s obvious he doesn’t care. Soobin thinks he should care…but it’s not like Yeonjun would listen to him if he said that.

All at once he's unsure of what they are even doing right now. This feels wrong, and he just wants to get away from this whole situation.

“I didn’t actually want to, anyway,” he snipes back immaturely, entirely wrong footed by the shifted atmosphere in the room. 

Yeonjun just gives him a look before twisting back around to look down at Taehyun pleadingly. 

"Soobin is being awful, Taehyun-ah. Put me out of my misery, please ."

"But this is only just starting to get entertaining," Taehyun complains, shooting Soobin a little sharp look of his own that he honestly doesn't know what to do with. 

What does that mean? Taehyun always assumes they’re able to read his mind through the way he squints his eyes at them no matter how many times they assure him they can’t.

"Teasing Soobin when he's like this isn't even fun for me right now,” Yeonjun says through a pout. “So what the hell are you getting out of it?"

Taehyun heaves a huge, beleaguered sigh and throws his arms out to the sides as he stands up in defeat.

"Fine. I’ll do it. But take a deep breath or something, hyung. Why are you so sensitive whenever you put crop tops on?"

"Oh…" Yeonjun's whole body goes still, the bluster cut from his sails. Something about him suddenly seems quiet—almost shy. "You can see it?" 

Soobin stares at the long, billowy dress-like black and white top he's wearing over top of his shorts and boots. He can't see it. 

"You obviously do need my help," Taehyun decides, his voice suddenly much softer. He grabs Yeonjun's elbow and steers him towards the door. "Why not make that the highlight of the outfit in the first place, hyung?"

"How can you even see it?" Yeonjun wonders quietly as he lets Taehyun drag him from the room.

Soobin watches them go like an idiot, his voice caught somewhere in his throat and he doesn't even know why. Yeonjun was oddly sensitive…but how did Taehyun even make that connection…?

"I was sitting right there when you decided to go flashing me with all that, hyung!" Taehyun's voice echoes through the gap in the door before it snicks shut.

The silence in their wake feels oppressive. 

Soobin feels really bad, like he did something wrong. No…given the way he lashed out totally unprovoked, he knows he really was wrong. It feels like he let Yeonjun down somehow. Or, strangely, Taehyun. 

He should have just shut up first to protect their privacy rather than get weirdly defensive and blame it all on Yeonjun. It’s hard to admit, but he’s perfectly aware of his own behavior. It’s not the first time.

Like an idiot he keeps repeating such unacceptable mistakes.

He tells himself to stand and follow after Yeonjun in order to apologize or something, but he’s not sure he’ll even be able to articulate exactly what he did wrong. Yeonjun always childishly demands to hear exactly what he’s sorry for when considering an apology, so he needs to solidify his case before he even attempts it.

He’ll have to talk to him later and beg for forgiveness. Dimples and aegyo might even need to get involved.

He clenches his teeth and digs out his headphones, shoving them roughly into his ears and hunching over his phone as he fumbles the cord into the headphone jack. Across the room the two lingering staff members are bent together in private conversation and one of them lets out a surprisingly nasty sounding laugh that catches Soobin's attention. 

He pauses with his thumb over the ‘play’ button of his previously abandoned video.

"That's what I'm saying. Heeseok said the girls at YG Ent. never even show half as much skin. Can you believe it?"

"So…what? If you like it then why don't you be the one to double check his content for approval this round?" the other mutters back sourly. 

Something about his tone makes Soobin freeze, holding his breath to listen, because it sounds like they’re talking about Yeonjun and it sits uncomfortably in his stomach. 

Something about this staff member seems off and he didn't expect to hear something like that here. The man spoke with an odd reluctance, the specific wording making it sound as if he…It sounds as if he disapproves. Of Yeonjun.

He stares down at his blank phone screen with his heart thudding loud and slow in between his ears.

His stomach burns and burns.

"Why does he insist on parading around in inappropriate clothes that need multiple approvals?" the man continues to gripe quietly. "This isn't what I signed up for."

"I know," the other returns. "I don't think 'fashion' is any sort of reason to allow him to get away with all the women's clothing. It makes him look like a girl."

"He keeps doing it on purpose—for attention. From men," the other says in a lower voice. It's strangely smooth. Suggestive."I think that's what he wants."

"Really." 

There's a thoughtful pause. Soobin holds his breath, the burning sensation so intense it feels like his stomach is dissolving into itself. 

"If it is…would you wanna fuck him?"

Soobin jolts in his seat.

"What? Hell, no. I’m not gay. Whatever he's doing with the skirts and shit is unnatural, that's for sure. If he wants men lusting after him then count me out. No way I'd touch that."

"I think it might be fun. Besides, maybe that's what the skirts are actually for—to hide his dick while he gets his little ass pounded.”

“It wouldn't be the same at all.”

“What’s not the same? He probably looks the same from the back. If I ever got my hands on him, I think I could make him sound like a girl, too."

"Why don’t you just get a real girl, then? Uhg."

"Trust me, I'm not the only one thinking it. Maybe you need to take another look and see that I'm right. He's gagging for it." 

"Whatever. I’m seriously not interested. Maybe you should just offer to take his slutty photos next time he comes prancing around. Make your move and get it out of your system."

"Good idea, bro. I think I might."

They share a laugh.

Soobin should speak up…tell them to mind their words. He should definitely report them to his managers and get them removed from their team—preferably kicked out of the company entirely—blacklisted from the industry— anything —

Maybe he has just been carefully sheltered until now, or naively oblivious, but this sort of verbal speculation is harassment of a sort he hasn't been exposed to like this before. It's inappropriate and offensive and it feels like he is the one who was just attacked. It scares him to hear them use such disgusting language in regards to Yeonjun. 

It scares him even more to imagine these men or anyone else actually acting on their words. 

He can't believe they would talk about Yeonjun so crassly like this behind his back. Where anyone could hear. Right here at the company while Soobin himself is sitting in the very same room. His headphones are on so they could reasonably believe he can’t hear them, but given the way they were speaking he thinks they wouldn’t even care who hears. 

He is too shocked and horrified to even know what to do. He curls his fingers tightly around his phone, feeling sick.

He doesn't say anything to interrupt or stop their conversation as they speculate over what that skirt Yeonjun wore a few weeks ago with the slits up the sides would look like on a girl. They are talking rudely about Yeonjun's hips and his ass, and Soobin can't seem to gather a single thread of courage to warn them off or reprimand them. 

He just…his mind is racing and he can't even lift his gaze to see who it is for sure that's even talking. He can't remember who they are now that he's not looking, doesn't know them well enough to have names for those voices.

Why can't he swallow his nerves and defend Yeonjun? He has to…he should, but he can't say a word. 

He's frozen in place because what scares him the absolute most is that he'd just been admiring Yeonjun's bare legs himself. He had just been sadly put out that Yeonjun hadn't flashed his secret crop-top where he could see, and he doesn't know what's wrong with him. He's horrified by himself.

Maybe they think no one else in the room can hear them. Or maybe they think their opinions are standard and any one else in the vicinity—namely Soobin—would agree. He doesn’t want to notice the same things these men do, to think about Yeonjun who he loves and respects unconditionally in any way similar to the way they do. 

He doesn’t think like that. 

He admires Yeonjun’s androgynous beauty and his unique fashion choices because he's brave in expressing himself regardless of judging eyes and the pressures of gender-typical conformity, and he does it so well. He always looks good, looks special, and it's another unique facet to his whole persona, showcasing his talents and gifts to this industry. 

He is inspiring. A role model. 

Of course not everyone has to like him or agree with Soobin's assessment regarding his character, but he likes to think his opinion is more accurate since he knows Yeonjun better than anyone else.

In skirts or in designer suits, ruggedly masculine with his hair slicked back and his brows darkened or with cotton-candy pink hair accentuating rosy pink lips—he can pull any and all of it off and be drop-dead gorgeous from every angle. Not to mention the flirting that's cute as it is sexy, or the way he smoothly fluctuates between charming smiles and smoldering sex appeal at the blink of an eye. While also being entirely genuine the whole time.

He is just…entirely unique. That’s just how he is, and he’s perfect.

But these men deeply disapprove of Yeonjun's chosen fashion to the point it makes them want to 'rip it off of him'. 

These men say his mannerisms and his disregard for social norms regarding gender appropriate behavior indicate he is a 'cockslut who deserves to be taught his place'.

They are just a pair of average guys, but they sure seemed to think Yeonjun was sending all sorts of signals that Soobin thought was just…normal Yeonjun behavior. There were none of those signals because Yeonjun doesn't want that sort of attention from anyone. Soobin is sure. 

If they are right…no, even though they are dead wrong, he hates to think it might be true that Yeonjun dressed and acted in a way that drew the inappropriate attention in the first place. Even if it's not intentional and even though it's not his fault how people perceive him…if Soobin considers the matter like that…Then Soobin disapproves, too.

Because he wants Yeonjun to be more aware. More careful.

Given the way he checked Yeonjun out without a second thought, he himself seems to have been encouraging and validating him, acting like whatever Yeonjun does is fine. But it isn't. It doesn't feel fine at all right now.

In a perfect world maybe it would be fine, but here in this current industry, in this conservative country…it isn't fine.

He saw the exact same thing those men did, afterall, which might imply he agrees with them, but he rejects that immediately. He doesn't want to group himself with anyone who could think or say such things about Yeonjun. He’s not like that. He feels sick and his heart aches.

Yeonjun did nothing wrong. He's different than they said. He's always been like that. It's just who he is. 

The way he does what he wants and honestly expresses himself no matter who's watching, the way he confidently moves his body and wears whatever he wants…all of it. All of it has always made Soobin admire him more than he can express through words. 

Yeonjun is absolutely stunning and inspiring in the way he presents himself to the world.

He's beautiful.

But never before has Soobin felt ashamed of thinking that about him—not like this. Never before has he felt scared of his proximity and place beside him.

He says it's an orbit he's locked into and can never escape from, but if people see that he's there willingly, enchanted by everything that is Yeonjun…what will they say about him? Will they assume he thinks ugly things like these men do? That he maybe even acts on them behind doors in the privacy of their dorm?

Or maybe that he, too, deserves to be shown his place, that 'he better start acting like a man if he doesn't want a good, hard fucking'?

He never thought the people close to them, staff they interact with regularly, might be harboring such opinions. That they feel confident and validated enough to voice them in public, in front of another member no less.

Was it a warning? A hint? Maybe they didn't even see him or think Soobin could hear them. But he could. He did. And now he can't get it out of his head.

Does Yeonjun have any idea? If he doesn't…how could Soobin ever try to break it to him? What right does he have to tell Yeonjun to stop wearing skirts and knee-high boots? To stop rolling his hips or sticking out his ass cutely. Or his tongue.

What right does he have to tell Yeonjun to stop being so unapologetically himself?

He can't.

Yeonjun deserves to be happy with himself and to do and wear whatever the hell he wants. It's not his fault these perverts think such depraved things about him.

Not his fault that Soobin …

No.

He's not like these creeps at all. He has never once thought about Yeonjun like they are. And he never will.

Even though it was horrible, it was a good thing Soobin was here to hear this. So he can do something about it. It is up to Soobin to keep a better eye on their staff and try to keep anyone from relating a word of this sort to Yeonjun's ears. He'll have to get managers involved somehow, as soon as possible. Maybe they can implement some sort of screening investigation for ensuring employees respect the idols they work for or else be removed.

He has to protect him. 

But…as he sits in the makeup chair sometime later as a stylist fiddles with his hair, he can't help but go over what he heard over and over again. Was what they said about Yeonjun's oftentimes provocative clothing actually so wrong? Is it them or Yeonjun who is inappropriate? And if it's Yeonjun who was inadvertently asking for it…what does that make Soobin's reaction to him?

He doesn't want to answer that, doesn't even want to think it. And so he doesn't. 

He puts it out of mind. It doesn't matter what he thinks about it in relation to himself. All that matters is Yeonjun, his happiness and safety, and even as he feels like his face has been rubbed in shit and like his heart very well might squeeze from his chest in shame, it doesn't matter.

He has to somehow protect Yeonjun from this.

He’s the last one to return to the dorm that evening after his extra schedules are over, and his spirits lift a little as he hurries down the chilly corridor and is met with a warm gust of air and laughter the moment he opens the front door. A tired smile is already stretching across his face as he quickly stows his shoes in the cabinet, his shoulders relaxing so suddenly he is shocked that they were so tense without him realizing.

“Soobin-hyung!” Kai greets happily the moment he steps into the living room area. “We saved you dinner–it’s on the table.”

“Thanks, Huening-ah. I actually already ate with Jisoo-hyung after the meeting.”

“Okay. Come here, then,” Beomgyu demands from where he’s sitting squished into Yeonjun’s side on the couch, both of them huddled together around Yeonjun’s phone. “Yeonjun hyung desperately needs his ego stroked some more. He just posted some new pics and everyone is freaking out, but it's "not enough" he says.” 

He grins, eyes sparkling with mirth as he nudges Yeonjun in the side with his elbow. Yeonjun yelps, body jolting, and quickly snakes out one hand to pinch Beomgyu’s thigh in retaliation. 

“My ego doesn’t need any stroking, you brat,” he fake-rages while Beomgyu screams and clutches at his abused leg dramatically.

Soobin’s footsteps slow to a stop as his brain catches up to what the topic at hand seems to be. New photos can only mean the ones he took this afternoon. 

He swallows thickly and forces his face into some sort of smile. “Actually, I’m gonna go shower real quick,” he mutters, hiking his bag further up his shoulder with an awkward bob of his head. 

Not weird. Not awkward at all.

Yeonjun quits attacking Beomgyu’s bare thighs and whips around quickly to fix Soobin with hopeful eyes. “Wait—before you go, just take a quick look. I wanna hear your opinion. It was so hard to choose the final shots.”

Soobin’s eyes widen and he shuffles another step towards the bathroom. He’s desperate to get away and not be involved in any more of this today.

“I already saw them,” he lies. He hasn’t. Not yet. And he promised himself he wouldn’t deliberately go looking, either. 

If Yeonjun takes it upon himself to show them to him he knows he’ll start remembering everything that happened in the break room earlier. Giving into him right now would essentially be enabling more of this- this unacceptable behavior. For both of them.

He has to separate himself, starting now. Maybe if he tones it down, Yeonjun will, too.

“What? When?” Yeonjun demands with a little disbelieving laugh. “I literally just uploaded them five minutes ago.”

“Yeah, and I was practically the first person to hit the ‘like’ button, duh,” he says, poking out his tongue at him. 

Maybe he’s trying too hard because he’s lying to his face, but he has to. He can't handle any more of this, but he feels like shit when Yeonjun’s face lights up so sweetly in response. He looks so happy.

“And? Which one did you like, specifically?”

"Second one." He guesses that's safe enough.

Yeonjun glows. "Thought you might," he says in a little, pleased voice, almost as if there's no one but the two of them in the room.

Soobin's heart turns over. Now he really wants to look at those pictures.

"Okay, but what's wrong with the others?"

God, he can’t really need Soobin’s opinion on this, can he? He already uploaded them all so what’s the point? Beomgyu’s probably right about the ego stroking because Yeonjun always gets oddly insecure after the fact, but he never knows what Yeonjun is hoping to hear when he demands feedback like this. 

He never has anything to say besides singing praises about Yeonjun’s pretty face or his sexy poses, and he’s really not sure that’s doing Yeonjun any good in the end. It’s hardly constructive criticism—that’s Taehyun’s department.

“I think they would have come out way better if I’d taken them,” he says flippantly. “That’s what I think.”

With a final nod, he turns and walks quickly away before Yeonjun can sink his claws in and drag anything more honest out of him. 

He really can’t right now. 

He doesn't dare.

“Aw, come on, hyung,” Beomgyu calls after him. “I need someone to back me up! It’s not too late to upload a few more. He wouldn’t listen to me when I told him to use the crop-top photo. It’s so hot, people will lose their minds!”

“You certainly lost yours,” Taehyun comments dryly from where he’s absorbed in his own phone, not even looking at any of them.

Kai cackles in agreement. Then adds in his sweetly serious yet overly flattering way, “Yeah, noona looks so good it would be a shame to keep it to ourselves.”

“No one’s keeping anything,” Beomgyu retorts loudly. “I just live for the comment section.”

“I’m not offering myself up for your entertainment,” Yeonjun grouses, sounding properly annoyed. “I worked so hard to present a tasteful work of art.”

“Mhm, very tasty,” Beomgyu agrees in an overly dramatic voice. “You should upload the crop-top one now for dessert.”

“Stop teasing me, or I swear—”

There’s the sound of palms smacking bare skin and Beomgyu screaming bloody murder, and Soobin doesn’t pause in his chosen trajectory. He doesn’t even hesitate. Not until he’s safely inside the bathroom with a firmly closed door between himself and all of that. 

Nothing but a door between all of this horrible twisted up wrongness and photos of Yeonjun in a crop-top and knee-high boots.

Why does no one else seem to think this is a problem? He doesn’t know what to even say.

He closes his eyes and lets his bag thump to the floor. 

He forces himself to think of other things, of the schedule for tomorrow, as he quickly runs through a shower followed by the bare minimum for his skin care routine. He retreats to his room before anyone catches sight of him, and feels too worn out and miserable to do anything but flop down on his bed and roll quickly under the covers.

He unlocks his phone with intentions to actually finish his interrupted episode from earlier, but pauses as he sees the push notification for twitter. Most likely Yeonjun’s latest post.

He stares at the bubble for a full minute, then yanks his blankets entirely up over his head. His screen dims automatically, but it’s still much too bright inside his private little cave—too exposed—and the longer he considers it the more sure he becomes. 

He can’t look at a single one of those pictures knowing there was a crop top under that shirt. It would make him want to see the unposted photos, to want to undress Yeonjun in his head just to picture it, and that’s just…he has no business being curious about that at all. Why should he?

If he opens the app right now here alone in his own bed and sees…if he confirms just how much of himself Yeonjun dared to expose to thousands of people across the world…He just can’t look at those legs knowing two men who they work with were looking at them, too. 

He burns with shame because he can’t seem to forget the way they looked at Yeonjun with disgust before talking about putting their hands on him, about fucking him like a girl because they believe he wants that, and he just—He can’t!

Soobin swipes the notification away and opens up his photo gallery instead, making a split second decision to do something he should have done ages ago. This has gone on for long enough, it’s entirely out of hand.

He hardens his resolve as he carefully scrolls down through his camera roll, one by one selecting and deleting every single image that’s a selka or social media photo of Yeonjun’s that he deliberately saved to his device. He’s not even sure why he felt the need to do such a thing, no matter how cool or pretty Yeonjun looks.

It’s not like he needs any of Yeonjun’s pictures saved on his personal phone. It’s not like he ever spends time looking at them later anyway, not when he has the real Yeonjun right in front of him every day. It’s silly.

It’s weird.

Those staff members would certainly think it’s weird if they caught a glimpse of his photo album, and that’s more than enough indication that he shouldn't have them at all. It’s much easier to widen his selection of deleteables after that idea crosses his mind.

Ten minutes later, he’s nearly at the bottom of his collection at last when his rapid-fire click, trash, confirm comes to an abrupt stop.

There’s a photo he hasn’t looked at again in ages, from a day over a year ago when Yeonjun’s pink hair was faded and fluffy, his cheeks rounder with youth and his face scrunched cutely into an adorable happy expression—like a little cat. He’d been trying to emulate the face of one of Kai’s plushies, and Soobin remembers telling him he was a million times cuter than the original. 

He remembers Yeonjun’s giggles and his pink cheeks, and right after he snapped this candid photo of Yeonjun trying once more to recapture the perfect shape of it’s happy eyes, he’d been tackled to the floor in an impromptu tickle war that had somehow ended with them cuddling and sharing stories about animals. 

While it’s not a sexy Instagram-worthy photo or otherwise prettily made up beauty shot Soobin shouldn’t even have on his phone in the first place, he’s not supposed to have any pictures of just Yeonjun alone on here anymore.

He’s deleting all of them for a reason.

He selects the photo, determined to see this purging through to the end, and yet…his finger hesitates over the trash can. His heart squeezes and he can’t seem to control the strangely physical reaction he’s having to the idea of deleting this photo forever. He almost feels like he might cry.

Because he loves this photo. 

He loves the memory surrounding it. He loves Yeonjun as he was that day…the two of them sharing that silly, sweet moment together. If he deletes it, it will be gone forever and there’s no getting it back.

He lays there for a long time, battling with himself until he’s even more confused than before, and it almost feels like he’s watching his own fingers move without his express permission as he quickly clicks a few buttons and creates a secure folder. 

He moves the picture inside, then closes it. Untitled.

He doesn’t know what the fuck he’s doing. If feels like he’s doing something wrong. If he’s hiding it…it must mean it’s wrong. A dirty little secret. He does it anyway.

Then he clicks back into his main album and ruthlessly deletes the rest. He doesn’t feel better after they are gone, and he’s sick of the thoughts stuck on repeat inside his head. 

It just feels like he lost something that he considered precious, but it’s annoying and stupid—irrational—because it’s not like he actually lost anything at all. He hasn’t lost Yeonjun, just a handful of his pictures, and he’s much better off without them anyway.

He wants to just forget about it because it’s not that important or a big deal like his stupid heart is making it out to be. There’s also the fact that if he was going to end up creating a freaking hidden secure folder, then he should have just moved every single photo into it and called it good.

He’s lying to himself if he tells himself the single photo he did save doesn’t mean anything.

So he doesn't lie. 

He admits that it is special, but only because of the memories attached to it. He was behind the camera that day, after all. He still doesn't move it back out of the hidden folder. It is enough that it's safe, and it's fine because he doesn't ever need to look at it again.

He’s exhausted and he just doesn't know what to do to make this unsettling, queasy feeling go away. 

The ugly feeling is still there the next morning, and all through the following week. It only seems to be growing and he hates it. 

He’s scared of it.

Something inside of him has changed but he can’t even articulate or express it. No one else seems to notice and the rest of them behave just the same as they always have. Especially Yeonjun.

That shouldn't be an issue at all, but for some reason Soobin can no longer happily bask in Yeonjun's bright warmth. It feels dangerous.

It feels wrong.

Yeonjun's magnetism tugs on his heart like always, tugs relentlessly on his cells down into each atom of his being—forcing him to look. He always thought it was impossible to turn away because Yeonjun is his sun. He has always been content to circle his beautiful glow from afar. He never even wanted to turn away before…

But he should. 

And he will.

It might take a while to adjust, but he promises himself he will.

That uncomfortable, guilty feeling is still there the next weekend on the morning they’re scheduled to head to the airport for a flight to New York.

Soobin thinks it has gotten a little easier to bear, time and distance separating him from the unpleasant shock of that day with the staff and their comments, but then Yeonjun goes and brings it all right back. Commanding him to look.

And this time it's a hundred times worse.

Soobin just about loses it all over again the moment Yeonjun pads into the shared living room space on bare feet, legs on full display once more because he’s chosen to wear an extremely tiny denim miniskirt and nothing else under it. 

Soobin nearly drops the items in his hands, his gaze sweeping up along those legs to Yeonjun’s baggy, silky sky blue graphic print button down, and then up to where his long black hair is tied back into a ponytail. Pieces of his fringe have escaped the hair tie to frame his face prettily, and his lips seem extra pink and glossy with some product as he pouts and mutters to himself, obviously searching for something while utterly unconcerned over the way that he’s currently dressed like…like that.

Soobin’s throat closes up as he tries not to stare. 

He’s too pretty…always so effortlessly pretty, and the way he absently brushes loose strands of hair out of his face as he pads around all soft and barefooted in that outfit makes Soobin feel so…He just wants to pause the world right here so he can cross the room and pull him into his arms, right there up against his chest and breathe in his shampoo. 

He knows exactly how he would feel, the familiar hard planes of his wiry body and the surprisingly soft give to his ass, and he wants to run his fingers down the line of his bare thigh and just hold on to him, to sink his hands into his long hair or maybe tug on that tantalizing pony before doing something with those pouty, peachy lips, and— 

The sudden flood of want is enough to make him dizzy. All at once he’s hyper aware of himself and his own body’s reaction to Yeonjun looking so unassuming and cute—and Soobin shouldn’t be like this. He has more than enough reasons why he shouldn’t! 

He promised himself he wouldn’t let a single thought or desire cross his mind if it was something he wouldn’t want to hear a male staff member say about Yeonjun. The direction and intensity of his current thoughts are things he’d never, ever want to hear another man say. He never wants anyone else to ever even think it!

He just…he can’t bear it. He can’t bear to look at him when it makes him lose his senses. It’s bad. He knows he’s bad for reacting like this. 

He doesn’t want to feel like this.

Yeonjun is certainly not dressed up like that for any other reason than he wants to be, all trusting and vulnerably bare-faced with his eyes puffy from sleep, and he doesn’t deserve to be objectified and leered after in the comfort of his own home. 

Soobin is so wrong for this.

He sucks in a deep breath and clenches his hands. He needs a moment to collect himself, but before he excuses himself to his room to slap some sort of sense into his own stupid head, he has to make sure Yeonjun realizes that he can’t wear that. He can’t really be intending to wear that outside in public. To the airport ? 

Soobin doesn’t believe Yeonjun would really be that daring…he must intend to change into something else any moment now. He probably planned his airport outfit days ago, so why does he even have that skirt on in the first place when they’re heading out in less than an hour?

Soobin feels like he’s going crazy and Yeonjun is so blissfully unaware it’s like some sort of joke.

The thud of approaching footsteps down the hall startles him out of his thoughts.

“G’morning. Yeonjun-noona,” Kai greets in his usual cheery morning voice as he bustles into the room. “You look nice.”

“Thanks, cutie,” Yeonjun says distractedly. “But has anyone seen my charger? The one that has a USB connection?”

“It’s probably buried under the mess in your room, hyung,” Soobin says, forcing himself to refocus on his task and stop looking. 

He’s sure Yeonjun will change before they leave. It’s probably no more than thirty-five degrees outside. Even women don’t wear their legs bare in weather like this, but he doesn’t imagine for a minute that Yeonjun plans to slip on leggings or, god forbid, stockings under that…he wouldn’t.

Beomgyu enters the room next, dragging his luggage while dramatically huffing with effort even though there are no cameras and no one is there to care. Yeonjun continues to hunt around under sofa cushions, ignoring Soobin’s advice. 

Beomgyu dumps his overstuffed bag down with an exaggerated noise then does a low wolf whistle at Yeonjun’s back because he has crawled halfway into the gap behind the sofa on his hands and knees. His ass is in the air and the short skirt just barely covers his modesty as he rummages around back there with his head completely out of sight. 

Soobin can’t look away. How is he supposed to look away? He wants to tell Beomgyu to look away—

Why the hell is Yeonjun even wearing that? It would be the same amount of skin showing if he was strutting around in a pair of boxers but without the risk of flashing anyone, and Soobin just doesn’t understand why—

Yeonjun shoves himself upright and twists back around to shoot Beomgyu an annoyed look, but his face breaks into a wide smile as he sees the black cords in the other boy’s hands.

“Found this in my room, hyung,” he says, waving the item around. “Thought you might want it for the plane.”

“Yes, jagi, you saved me!” Yeonjun beams, scrambling to his feet and happily accepting it.

Taehyun enters the scene next, glancing between his phone and the rest of them distractedly as his fingers fly across the screen. He pauses and looks at Yeonjun, a quick sweep of eyes up and down his form. Soobin's shoulders slump in relief. If Taehyun is the one to tell him it will be a lot less awkward.

“You just about ready, hyung?” he asks, because it’s obvious that Yeonjun is actually not ready. He’s not even dressed! But Yeonjun just nods back easily as if he really does intend to leave the house like that. 

Taehyun nods back and returns his attention to his phone, while the other two make their way to the front door with their things, and why is no one else mentioning the skirt? Why aren’t they concerned about this at all?

Soobin can’t…he can’t let him do this. No fashion statement is more important than safety. He only needs to mention the weather or something, but he really wants to tell him to take it off and change into something else. 

He wants to tell him to stop inviting the wrong attention. 

Yeonjun keeps doing it because he’s always done it, but these days it seems like he’s getting more careless and thoughtless, and it seems like no one has even hinted or stopped to explain the repercussions to him. Does Yeonjun really not realize the way people are looking at him and talking about his body? 

He can’t really be clueless, Soobin knows a lot of it is intentional—purposeful—so he doesn’t know how to tell him without offending him. He’s just…going too far at this point, and getting a little offended is still far better than the alternative.

“Um, hyung…” he begins haltingly, his pulse starting to pick up despite his efforts to remain calm. It feels like he’s instigating a confrontation, and he really doesn’t want to be the one to have to bring it up at all, but if he doesn’t do it, apparently no one will. “Don’t you think you should change now?” 

Yeonjun pauses where he’s carefully curling the long cord around the base of his chunky headphones, his head jerking up. He stares at Soobin blankly for a long moment. “Why?” he asks, sounding genuinely confused. 

Soobin stares back, growing flustered as he registers the way the others look over at him as well. “Just…that skirt might become uncomfortable…? It’s a fifteen hour flight.” 

Yeonjun slowly sets his headphones down on top of his carry on bag, a light frown forming between his brows. He hasn’t stopped staring at Soobin. 

He regards him attentively for another agonizing minute before he places his hands upon both hips and cocks his chin a little in something that feels like a challenge. Soobin did not intend for this to happen. He was trying to be tactful, but he can already see that now Yeonjun is going to make a big deal of it. His heart sinks, sweat breaking out on his palms.

He tries to brace himself, but Yeonjun looks like he’s pissed and he doesn’t blame him. Soobin has never said anything judgmental like this before, and it’s weird, but he has to.

“Why?” Yeonjun repeats, jaw clenching. “Are you uncomfortable with my skirt?”

Soobin shakes his head, grimacing. Before he can figure out what to say to explain his reasoning, Yeonjun is already continuing.

“Well, I’m quite comfortable in this, thanks for your thoughtful concern.” His expression is so hard…like he’s daring him to refute that or tell him otherwise. “So comfy,” he repeats flatly. “Great airflow. You should try it sometime and see for yourself.”

Soobin swallows, glancing at Taehyun helplessly because he thinks out of all of them he might understand what Soobin intended when he thoughtlessly opened his mouth. He needs Taehyun to join him in convincing Yeonjun to dress more appropriately…but the other boy’s eyes just dart between the two of them, his lips pressing into a line.

“Um, hyung…it’s February,” Soobin says stupidly. He’s desperate. He doesn’t know what the hell he can say to make this come out right. He’s already put his foot in his mouth and no one is coming to his rescue.

Yeonjun’s eyes narrow, darting across Soobin’s face, and then his shoulders suddenly relax. “Oh. Are you just too shy to say you’re worried I’ll freeze my balls off?” One side of his full lips curls up into a little grin that feels fake, like he’s forcing it, and it falls flat when Soobin refuses to tease back. His throat is closing up and he can’t pretend he’s joking. 

Beomgyu chuckles. “You probably will, hyung. I can practically see them from here.”

“No, you can’t,” Yeonjun snaps back, both hands shooting down to hover protectively in front of his crotch. “Stop trying to see , you perv.”

“It’s not like I have to put in very much effort, hyung,” Beomgyu teases, over exaggerating a sideways dip of his head as if he really is trying to see. “That thing is so short.”

Soobin realizes he should have looked to Beomgyu for backup from the very start. He obviously gets it.

Yeonjun rolls his eyes and huffs a loud breath from his mouth that puffs up his fringe in a little fluff. He looks back at Soobin and his face softens. “Okay, I get it. Of course I’m not going to wear it like this, Binnie. It’s February ,” he says with a little giggle of amusement as if that was obvious. As if Soobin is just being silly when he’s actually dead serious. 

Soobin can’t seem to smile back. It really wasn’t obvious or Soobin wouldn’t have made such a fool of himself.

“Yeah. Okay,” Soobin mumbles, embarrassed and trying not to show it. "So…um…" He hesitates, wanting Yeonjun to elaborate on what the hell he means by ‘not wear it like this’ when Soobin clearly meant that he doesn’t think Yeonjun should wear it at all.

“Soobin-hyung…what is your problem?” Taehyun suddenly demands. 

Soobin’s heart sinks as he looks at him. What the hell does Taehyun mean by that? Why is he calling him out like this?

“I’m not—there’s no problem,” he protests. His hands are starting to shake and even though Yeonjun was smiling and trying to laugh it off for Soobin’s sake, now that sweet expression has dropped off his face. 

He’s staring at Soobin with the beginnings of hurt written all over him, and Soobin doesn’t really understand why he’s so defensive. Yeonjun knows how Soobin doesn’t care about his fashion choices. Soobin has always told him—he knows Soobin is his biggest fan and support, so why…

Soobin feels unfairly put on the spot. He was only trying to prevent unpleasant backlash.

“Soobin…I thought you understood me. I really don’t care what anyone has to say about the clothes I choose to put on my own body,” Yeonjun says quietly. “You probably didn’t mean to come across like that, but I don’t appreciate you implying that I’m wrong to dress like this.”

“I never said that,” Soobin says hurriedly, heart squeezing in a bit of panic. Even though he might have actually thought so, it’s only because of those things the staff were saying. Soobin just can’t let it go. 

He doesn’t want to hurt Yeonjun. It is the exact opposite. Yeonjun has misunderstood him entirely but he can’t say that he guiltily loves how the skirt looks on him and then just happily let him walk dressed like that in front of multiple cameras and thousands of judging eyes. 

He feels physically nauseous if he dares to imagine some of the things people will say. The way they’ll shame Yeonjun for it and talk about him like he’s nothing more than a shameless sex object. He just wants to protect him from that.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to make you feel bad. You can wear whatever you want, hyung,” he reassures him in a tiny voice, hoping his sincerity rings true. He’s not sure it does.

“Yeah, I’m going to,” Yeonjun says coldly, spinning on his heel and stomping down the hall. 

His ponytail bobs cutely with the force of his angry steps and Soobin forces himself not to watch, dragging his gaze back to their friends feeling wrong footed and weird. 

How the hell did this conversation spiral so far out of control? He was only trying to…to ensure Yeonjun thought twice about what he was planning to show the world today. To make sure he was really okay with the sort of attention an outfit like this would bring.

“Um…while I understand what you were thinking about, Yeonjun can present himself however he wants to. No matter what,” Taehyun reprimands quietly. “I think you owe hyung a big apology. That wasn’t cool.” 

Soobin tries not to shrink before him, but he feels so horribly small and wrong. “I didn’t mean it like that,” he repeats weakly. 

“I know. I just said I understand,” Taehyun repeats tersely. “But hyung obviously didn’t understand. He’s sensitive about this topic even though he loudly pretends not to be.”

“I know that,” Soobin says, bristling at the implication that he might not have. Taehyun sighs.

“It’s not like he really would have gone out in nothing but that skirt,” Beomgyu mutters in a low voice. “He was only in it at all because we’re home and he trusts us.”

That little quip more than any of the others makes Soobin feel the absolute worst. He wishes he could rewind back time and simply trust Yeonjun to know what he was doing. He shouldn’t have assumed or taken it upon himself to tell Yeonjun what to do.

He tries not to look when Yeonjun reappears just before they’re called down for the waiting vans, but Yeonjun is pausing deliberately before him, blocking his path. The other three continue ahead, tactfully closing the front door to leave them with a moment of privacy.

Yeonjun is still wearing the skirt, but he has pulled on a pair of distressed, wide-bottomed denims under it. The colors match and Soobin realizes that he might have been intending to style the skirt like this from the very onset. 

His throat closes up.

“You look good,” he manages to croak out, unable to meet Yeonjun’s eyes. 

Yeonjun opens his mouth as if he means to reply, then quickly shuts it again, clenching his jaw. Then he takes a quick, harsh inhale and says, “Okay. No. Just tell me what you really think.” 

“You always look good, hyung,” he assures immediately, feeling so sorry that he made Yeonjun question him. Doubt him. But it feels like the words mean more than they usually do. Like he’s revealing his innermost dirty thoughts, and it feels bad. 

He should have lied again. Said something else—anything else. He’s not even sure what Yeonjun is picking up in his expression right now, but it can’t be good.

Yeonjun holds his gaze unblinkingly, his own expression giving nothing away. “Don’t mess with me like that…okay?” he whispers, nearly inaudible, as if unsure of himself and the conclusions he drew from all of this. 

He shouldn’t be unsure. He really didn’t read the situation wrong at all. Soobin just truly fucked up. 

“I won’t,” Soobin says back, insides so twisted up in knots that his stomach hurts.

Yeonjun presses his lips together, grabs up his bag, and turns away. Soobin drags his feet and trails miserably behind. 

He has been so wrapped up in his head ever since he overheard the staff last week, and it’s turned him into a controlling, insensitive jerk. He’s just terrified that Yeonjun will be exposed to something like that, and he doesn’t know how to stop worrying over it. 

He doesn’t know how to get Yeonjun to…stop. Or to at least tone it down. Something. 

Even as the leader of their group, it’s not his place to make any sort of suggestion or demands in that regard since there are multiple people on their team who Yeonjun has to clear his public posts with. It doesn't matter what he's wearing when he shows up at work or to shoots because the stylists will simply put him in the planned attire, so really…It was totally out of line for Soobin to tell him something like that in the privacy of their own home.

He feels so ashamed of himself and overwhelmed by all the conflicting thoughts scrambling his head. And now he’s gone and hurt Yeonjun over it.

He’s such a mess.

Once they finally board the plane, Kai wordlessly pushes Soobin into his own seat before he can sit down, effectively forcing him to sit next to Yeonjun. The older boy is leaning back in his chair, long legs sprawled out in an artful display of nonchalance. The skirt drapes over his hips and the tops of his thighs, adding a pretty detail to the whole outfit. 

He looks really good, but his face is turned coldly away, hidden behind his mask, and Soobin wants nothing  more than to make it up to him. To make things right between them again.

It takes him the better part of an hour to figure out what he wants to say, and then he waits until the first round of snacks has passed and the lights are dimmed before he cautiously leans his shoulder against Yeonjun’s. Yeonjun immediately drags his headphones away from his ears and turns to him as if he was actively waiting for Soobin to reach out, and his stomach flip-flops at the gesture. 

By now he feels guilty enough about it all to cry over it.

“Hyung, I’m really sorry,” he murmurs quietly, leaning further into Yeonjun’s space for privacy.

Yeonjun regards him with big, dark eyes, the glimmer of vulnerability and hurt that he put there staring back at him accusingly for a long moment. His heart throbs at the sight.

“I didn’t mean it like that. I promise.”

“No, you were completely serious,” Yeonjun denies lowly. His lashes flutter as he swallows. “I keep thinking about it…and I just don’t understand why you said that.”

Soobin reaches over quickly to wrap his fingers around Yeonjun’s hand where it rests limp in his lap. He squeezes and drops his gaze somewhere around Yeonjun’s collar bones as he tries to explain himself. “Yeah, I know it was weird. It’s just…a few days ago I came across some really nasty comments,” he begins, pausing in alarm as his voice breaks slightly over the words. 

He squeezes Yeonjun’s hand again, urgently. Begging him to understand why he’s so deeply worried even though he’ll never be able to repeat a single word those men said with his own lips. 

“They were…they were awful. Talking about the way you dress and how it makes them want to…to do things to you. To hurt you for it. And it just…it scared me.”

Yeonjun is utterly silent and still beside him, his breath coming in quiet little puffs against his mask.

It’s a huge relief to have said it. To finally warn Yeonjun about something he seems completely unaware of, and even though Soobin wishes he could remain blissfully innocent and carefree, things like this need to be addressed and taken into account. Yeonjun needs to be aware. He needs to be more careful.

“You should have told me right away, Soobin,” Yeonjun reproaches softly. “You shouldn’t have had to feel like that on my account.” He sounds so damn concerned, for Soobin , and he can’t do anything but shake his head.

Yeonjun pulls his hand away from Soobin’s grip, lifting his arm up to instigate a hug instead, and Soobin slumps against him heavily, tucking his arm around his waist. He notches his head into the space beside Yeonjun’s ear and closes his eyes.

“I’m sorry,” he mumbles again.

“Don’t be sorry for worrying about me,” Yeonjun says softly, tightening his arms. “I’m okay. I know there’s a lot of crappy people out there who’ll judge me and hate whatever I do, but I avoid it as best I can. I don’t want to change myself or be afraid to express myself because of the shitty things other people say or do. That’s not how I want to live my life.”

“I know,” Soobin says, squeezing Yeonjun’s waist. He loves how it feels to hold him like this. “I admire you so much, hyung. You’re so brave.”

“There’s nothing brave about it,” Yeonjun denies. “It’s just a decision I made for myself years ago, and now I don’t even need to think about it. I’m just…true to myself.”

“You’re so amazing. I don’t know how you do that.”

Yeonjun nuzzles his chin into Soobin’s shoulder affectionately and huffs a little pleased laugh, the rich warm sound of it crawling into his heart and banishing some of the dirty sludge that has been stagnating there for days. 

They pull apart from the hug and Soobin searches Yeonjun’s eyes to find nothing but fondness shimmering in their depths. It makes his breath catch.

“You big softie. I should have known something like this was behind it all,” Yeonjun says, eyes crinkling at the corners as he smiles behind his mask. “I’m sorry for doubting you—even for a second.”

Soobin winces and bites his lip. The guilt isn’t all purged, yet, apparently. He hadn’t realized he made such a big impact on him over this one fucked up conversation, and he wishes he could go back and undo it.

For all that Yeonjun says he’s confidently ignoring the negative feedback and proudly being himself, he’s entirely much too sensitive and easily wounded. Soobin knows that. Hell, Yeonjun knows that Soobin knows that. It's why Soobin has to look out for him.

“I didn’t want anyone to hurt you, but then I went and ended up being the one to hurt you instead,” he confesses. 

“It’s okay. I get it,” Yeonjun assures him, sounding like he really does. “I’m not upset with you.”

"Thanks—I'm glad. That's a huge relief."

Yeonjun giggles. There's a pause.

"So…do you not actually hate my skirt?" he whispers shyly, as if he truly has no idea how Soobin feels about it. None of his flirty confidence is present, just Yeonjun—barefaced and with his heart on his sleeve. Just Yeonjun as he is with only them—as he is at home.

Giving Soobin a second chance. Forcing him to tell the truth. 

He can't look him in the eyes anymore.

"No, hyung," he whispers back. "I think I like it too much." His eyes drop to look at it again, half covered by the thin airplane blanket, and he reaches out one hand to hook his forefinger into the nearest belt loop. He clutches it tight. 

He knows this is more than enough honesty to ruin all of his efforts of the past week. To even ruin him, maybe.

But for right now…for Yeonjun's happiness…

Let him be ruined.

*****

It was nice to be in The States where they could walk along the streets more or less just like any other person. Mundane and carefree, but holding the little secret that they were actually something special. Famous. It felt indulgent and nice.

Sometimes there were a few MOA waiting to greet them at the airports or outside their venues, but given the size of that country and the sheer amount of people who have never heard of them and couldn’t care less, it felt different in America. It was fun. 

Not so at all when they set foot once more in Korea. Even after all these years navigating the countless airports between long flights, coming home to Korea is always Soobin’s least favorite stop. Exiting the final doors from baggage claim into Incheon International marks the moments he always most feels like a spectacle in the worst way, and it never gets easier. In fact, it has been getting worse.

Their popularity and fame has been steadily increasing, but with the latest comeback it has soared beyond all expectations. It was thrilling and amazing at first, satisfying and so incredibly validating until the reality of their lives changing forever started to sink in and he realized that it was actually pretty terrifying. 

It feels a little like he has regressed, more nervous and awkward with himself in public in a way he thought he grew out of already, but given the circumstances it’s hard to put on a confident face. More and more these days, he has been taking most of his cues from Yeonjun.

Soobin double checks his mask and smooths both hands down around the sides of his head to pull his beanie a little lower and ensure his bright blonde hair is completely covered. Less noticeable. His height is already enough to have him stand out like a beacon, but he always goes for dark toned clothes that swamp his body like a comforting shield. 

He’s quietly grateful for the other members beside him meaning the fans’ attention will be divided. Before the whole thing with the inappropriate comments, he’d been especially thankful for the way Yeonjun always commanded a good portion of that attention. He was always impressed and proud of Yeonjun for refusing to change or yield in the face of daunting scrutiny, for refusing to hide himself away like Soobin instinctively wishes to do, but now Yeonjun's confidence just makes him incredibly anxious.

It doesn’t help that Yeonjun still doesn’t seem to care what anyone says about him. No, it's not that he doesn't care, it's that he doesn't want to care, even though maintaining emotional distance from unexpected hate is difficult. Negative attention is never their own faults, but Soobin is so afraid to cause it. 

He wants Yeonjun to put more effort into avoiding causing it, but like usual he is doing the opposite.

Given the fact he knows people will be looking today, Yeonjun deliberately seems to have chosen bold colors and unique fashion statements such as the bright pink puffer jacket he’s currently bundled up in. The floor length oversized black slacks he’s wearing under it are technically a pair of pants, but it’s so flowy that it certainly looks like a skirt when he walks.

He’s in primarily women’s clothing again today because apparently Yeonjun woke up feeling like that , but at least there’s hardly any skin showing this time. Soobin hates the way that thought even pops into his head right now.

Yeonjun looks like he just stepped off the runway and not off a plane, and he will certainly be garnering plenty of attention today. Just like always.

The older boy slouches around next to the baggage carousel as they wait for everyone to gather their things, repeatedly running his hands through his long dark hair to card it up off his forehead before shaking it down around his face and tucking the long strands demurely behind both ears. Soobin recognizes the gesture as his own subconscious tick—always absently touching his hair when he’s nervous or thinking too hard—but it’s not the sort of nerves like Soobin’s that bubbles uncomfortably in his gut and makes him shrink and want to hide. It’s the sort that makes his chin lift with confidence and his hips sway with a little bit of extra flair as he eats up the floor with his model-worthy ‘I know you’re watching me’ gait.

As his gaze traces over the visible portion of Yeonjun’s face above his mask, he belatedly notices the irritable notch to his brows. He’s no doubt concerned about what they’re about to face on the other side of those doors, and is psyching himself up to face it. It is always a performance for the five of them when they are in public, and sometimes it feels like such a heavy price for being able to pursue his dream.

This group and their shared dream, their shared lives, means so much to him, but he honestly doesn’t think he’d be able to bear it without them sharing the burden alongside him.

At moments like this when he feels small and wishes for obscurity, he admires his hyung on a personal level that he knows he’ll never reach or be comfortable with, but he’s always been more than okay with that. He enjoys watching Yeonjun shift before an audience and blossom under attention, likes watching him strut around like he thinks he’s the hottest thing in the room, which he usually is, because what Yeonjun has goes beyond just a pretty face or a perfectly sculpted body—something all five of them and every other idol in the industry all have.

It is more than that. Yeonjun has always had something more. Something special. Soobin still can’t even describe what it is exactly, even after all this time. 

The whole presence of him. His charisma. His charm. His desire to be seen and to be not just the best, but the only one, makes it incredibly difficult to ever look away. Incredibly difficult to resist the pull of gravity drawing you into his orbit to trap you there. 

Soobin feels properly trapped by him, even here in the busy baggage claim area, and the anxious feeling within him grows more noticible. Now that he is more aware of his own star-gazing habit and how weird it might come across, it feels like he won't be able to hide it well in front of an eager crowd. Maybe someone will notice that something has shifted, that Soobin is off, and he has to keep some space between them even though the urge to shield Yeonjun is hard to ignore.

He doesn't move closer to him to use his bulk to block the view since he is certain Yeonjun would hate that. He lets his eyes linger on him instead as their team surrounds them and they finally head towards the doors.

Soobin reminds himself it won't be more than ten minutes and gratefully accepts the gesture of support when Taehyun steps close to link his arm around the crook of Soobin’s elbow.

It’s no less intense than he expected. 

It’s like walking into a wall of noise and light, and he shutters his eyes to blindly follow the bodies in front of him, nodding his head slightly in the direction of the sea of blurred faces. He carefully avoids looking through the gathered crowd too closely because their Korean fans are always wielding expensive professional cameras, and the numerous news station representatives immediately leap forward to get all up in their faces. 

He’s overly aware of the high resolution lenses picking up every single motion and expression on their faces as they walk the gauntlet, and it’s nerve wracking to say the least. He can no longer find the excitement of being spotted and known in public, because with each blinding flash and shrill screech of his name he feels less like a person and more like some fake version of himself. Just a package to be gawped at—an idol—not Soobin. 

But that is good. He doesn't want them to see the real Soobin. That would be a disaster. Just the thought of his dark insides being exposed is enough to shorten his breath and quicken his gait to try and run from it all.

The scrutiny is incredible, the way fans crush together along the mandated security line nothing short of overwhelming. Their loud screams draw attention from all sides as more fans rush over to catch a glimpse while normal folk try to either avoid the crazed chaos or strain their necks to try and see what all the fuss is about.

Their protocol team closes around them in ranks, faces stern and serious while airport security work along with the group of hired bodyguards to control the crowd and offer them safe passage towards the exit where their vans await. 

They are quickly shepherded along, their close-knit formation falling apart partway across the floor as they navigate around one of the seating areas. Taehyun’s fingers press firmly into his arm, grounding and comforting, and he slows his anxious gait slightly to accommodate his friend’s shorter legs. 

At the front of their group, Yeonjun is stalking purposefully towards the doors just up ahead, their blissful freedom just in sight. The crowd undulates and shrill screams of their names punctuate the constant snapping and clicking of cameras from all sides. 

It’s just as stressful and hectic as always and Soobin hates how overwhelmed he feels by it all, too much noise and stimulation on top of the bone-deep exhaustion that the past twenty-four hours of travel has left him with. The fans seem to realize they’re nearly at the exit and soon to be out of sight, and the noise increases as they call out with longing in their voices, surging against the make-shift barrier of security holding them back. 

Soobin lifts his free hand to wave and nod to the news crews and the dispatch camera a woman is holding up as she scurries back along the line to film him and Taehyun here at the back, listening with half an ear to the directions of the staff calling for them to move along.

He turns a little to offer one last greeting to the mass of wailing fans they’re leaving behind then turns back to the front with a real little smile hidden behind his mask as his body preemptively begins to relax. He nearly knocks into Kai who is walking just in front of him and reaches out to press a palm to his back to alert him to their proximity, his eyes darting over the maknae’s shoulder then up as he catches movement from up above the ground floor.

There’s a central staircase that was blocked off for the cleaning ahjummas to mop and polish the clear sheet of glass that serves as a railing and wall. It protrudes over their path slightly, and the woman currently cleaning the switch back directly over them has paused in her work to look down at the commotion. 

There’s no reason for him to look up beyond a cursory glance, but he does a double take as he notices the odd way she crouches down to lift her large cleaning bucket into her arms before standing up again to prop it on the lip of the railing precariously for a moment. Soobin frowns a little as he stares up at her curiously, distractedly allowing Taehyun to lead him forwards.

Partially hidden behind the sheer size of the bucket, he can’t make out more than a typical head of dark curls cropped short above a mask obscuring her face, but the way she’s peering intently down at the passing procession while her bucket wobbles alarmingly on the edge draws his full attention. 

He’s too far away to do anything to prevent the impending accident, there’s nothing anyone could do even if he calls out for those walking directly under that spot to watch out. There’s nothing but a gasp of shocked disbelief, time suspended for an endless moment that will loop inside his brain for days as he watches her heft her bucket and deliberately upend it over the edge. 

Liquid pours out in a gushing waterfall, cascading directly down onto the people passing below her. 

No, not onto people, onto exactly just one person—onto a hot pink jacket and dark hair, Yeonjun —and the moment it splashes over his head and envelopes his body he’s stumbling and collapsing out of sight behind the bodies of their staff and Beomgyu who all reflexively startle away from the spraying liquid before they could even register Yeonjun’s reaction. 

Soobin can’t see him, but even from this distance and despite all the noise he could hear him:

A shocked little cry of pain that shoots like a dart into Soobin’s chest, static in his brain as he tries to process what’s just happened.

There’s an explosion of noise that buffets his ears, a sudden shift in the pitch of the screaming because Yeonjun has just been attacked , and cameras are flashing from every side as the security surges forwards to try and brace against the swell of movement. 

The cleaning ahjumma is leaping up the stairs nimbly, running quickly away as if she planned this and unfortunately has a solid head start from the airport police, who are belatedly charging up the foot of the stairs to apprehend her.

Soobin doesn’t care about the woman or the police. He only cares about Yeonjun, and he can’t see him—

There’s nothing but a heap on the floor barely visible beyond the huddle of staff that converged on him, and he can’t even get a proper look, frozen horribly in place before firm hands are grabbing him up and maneuvering him against his will because his legs have turned into jelly.

Then Soobin can’t see anything as a large dark coat is being thrown over his head, firmly shoving his head and shoulders down while a strong arm wraps around his waist to assist him, half carrying half dragging him blindly along.

He struggles to breathe through the panic, unable to hear anything but an intelligible crush of noise beyond the fabric muffling his ears and the loud voices of their staff urgently calling, "move, move, move !" as they help him flee the scene.

He desperately tries to see beyond the flapping edge of the jacket, but there’s nothing but white tiled floor and then the cold cement below him before a gust of frigid winter air blows up and under the garment to smack him in the face. He’s hardly gasped in response before he’s being lifted bodily and ushered into a waiting van, hands grabbing him from the inside to drag him firmly in. He’s so big and gangly it’s a challenge for both the staff as well as him, and it hurts to be manhandled so roughly even though he wouldn’t be able to function without help right now because his head is stuffed full of cotton and he can’t breathe.

The jacket is being torn off his head by multiple pairs of hands, loud voices shouting beside him as he vaguely registers the sound of the van door slamming, and he jerks his head around frantically to take in the occupants of the car.

Kai is directly behind and beside him, scrambling out from under his own make-shift cover with the help of staff, face pale and eyes wild as their gazes meet for a split second before he turns away to press anxiously against the window to peer outside. 

“What’s happening!?” Kai demands in a loud, terrified voice—he’s beside himself. “Where’s Yeonjun hyung?!” 

Soobin’s eyes dart around the spacious van, heart flipping over in further panic as he registers who’s present and who is glaringly missing. The seats beside him and Kai are filled with the staff that rushed them here, while in the back row he catches a glimpse of Beomgyu’s cheeks all streaked with tears before he’s being gathered into the protective embrace of one of their team—his small form engulfed out of sight.

Taehyun is looming halfway across the console up front, one hand gripping the right arm of the driver as if to prevent him from changing gears to shoot them out into traffic, nearly shouting through his mask, “—need to wait! Yeonjun isn’t here yet!”

“Taehyun, sit down!” Minho-hyung is commanding from the passenger seat up front, twisted in his seat to face the irate idol. His voice is loud but steady as he places one hand on Taehyun’s shoulder and pushes him firmly back into the waiting, supportive hands of the others. “You need to calm down right now—everything is being handled.”

“What’s being handled!? You don’t know what’s going on, either!” Taehyun shouts back. “And Gisa-nim was about to leave! How is that okay?”

He shrugs violently away from the staff that are trying to force him to sit, knocking against each other in the cramped space enough to make Soobin cringe away. Kai’s arms shoot around his torso before loud, shallow puffs of air sound directly beside his ear. Soobin watches the scuffle with wide eyes, gripping at the leather seat with numb fingers and sagging into Kai’s hold. 

He’s feeling faint, his stomach in nauseous knots and he can’t think—

“If we need to leave, we will,” Minho replies, raising his voice to be heard over Taehyun’s furious panting. “It’s my job to keep you safe, and that’s all that matters right now.” 

“What about Yeonjun hyung?!” Taehyun nearly screams, whole body vibrating with upset as the staff successfully wrangles him down into a seat. He’s glaring at Minho with huge, bright eyes, his whole face gone red. “Why would you leave without him? He was on the floor—”

Yeonjun was on the floor, Soobin saw—

He cried out and fell right there, surrounded by people on all sides, but no one protected him. No one could have done anything to prevent that mysterious liquid from hurting him.

Because what if it wasn’t just cleaning products or water, but bleach ? What if he was burned by chemicals in a matter of seconds, and his skin—his face—is ruined ?

“Jisoo-hyung and the others are with him, they’ll take care of him—” Minho is saying, trying to reassure them even though he’s equally upset at this point. The words ring hollow because none of them actually know what’s happening out there. “Sit down and give me a moment to check the radio. If he’s to be taken in an ambulance, then we’ll be leaving right away as soon as I get the clear.”

Soobin swoons at that word 'ambulance', choking on the force of his own gasps as the whole world tilts alarmingly.

“Soobin—breathe through your nose!” A voice is commanding him; he can't see—

His vision dims as his body is manhandled around some more, and the next time he blinks it’s to see the brown mat lining the floor and his own two feet swimming in and out of focus as his head hangs heavily between his knees. He wheezes and coughs, struggling to breathe and trying not to cry, trying not to throw up, as voices fill his ears and tell him what to do. 

He focuses on Kai’s arms around his waist, the head pressed tightly into the back of his shoulder and slumps over into his warmth desperately. He listens to Kai’s loud, heavy breaths and nothing else, the rest of the conversations in the van nothing but buzzing in his ears until they’re suddenly being jostled again.

“Hold up!” someone says loudly. “Get the door open—he’s coming!”

“Huening, scoot over,” another hyung encourages, tugging the maknae away from Soobin and into the back with Beomgyu, and Soobin jerks his head up and whirls in his seat even as hands press him back towards the far wall to open up space.

He can see the approaching group through the dark tint of the window, a whole gaggle of security and staff obscuring the small figure bundled protectively in their midst, but there’s a pop of bright pink and Soobin’s heart leaps up into his throat.

The next moment they’re opening the door, two of their staff scrambling out to flank both sides of the opening. Even though he can hardly see him beneath the protective jackets and raised arms, the fact that they’re bringing him to them instead of shipping him off to the emergency room makes his whole body tremble with hope and relief. 

In a matter of seconds, they cross the final distance and then it’s a jumble of bodies and hands as Yeonjun is delivered into the van at last.

He’s well enough to be on his own two feet even though he stumbles up the step, leaning on the staff that lift him into place before he’s half pushed, half scrambling into the space beside Soobin and the door slams shut with a loud bang. The driver is pressing on the gas and leaving the airport behind in a matter of seconds, but before he can even get a proper look at him, Soobin is already lunging forwards to wrap his arms around him tightly. 

He’s soaking wet— cold—and Soobin startles back, frantic eyes dragging over all of him. His long, sopping hair is half-obscuring his face even as he keeps his eyes lowered and his chin tucked into his chest, avoiding their eyes or hurting, and why has no one gotten him something to dry off?

“Are you okay, hyung?” comes at them from all sides, multiple voices echoing Soobin’s own frantic inquiry.

Yeonjun ducks his head further to hide his face as he nods, grunting, but his teeth are chattering and he’s hunched all into himself awfully. Even if he’s not injured in a manner that requires the hospital, he’s certainly not okay, and Soobin braces himself along the back of the seat against the motion of the car as he reaches for his drenched pink puffer. 

“Why do you still have this thing on?” Soobin chides in giddy concern. “Someone get me a blanket or coat, or something—” he calls loudly over his shoulder while carefully tugging the wet garment away from Yeonjun’s shoulders to leave him in his soft, knit black sweater. 

For some reason he seems to be swimming in it, the neckline gaping wide to expose his delicate collarbones—shining with droplets of moisture—and the fabric must be waterlogged and uncomfortable. It’s liberally damp to his searching hands, too. 

“Hyung, take this off too–it’s soaked,” he suggests, but before he can do more than brush the fabric above his narrow shoulders Yeonjun groans and jerks away slightly, curling into himself protectively. He crosses both arms across his chest in an x as he clasps his shoulders in shaking hands.

Soobin can only think of getting him dry and warm, but he looks like he’s hurting and he doesn’t know what to do. “Are you hurt?” he asks worriedly, running helpless fingers up and down his arms, heart skipping a beat when Yeonjun flinches away. “Hyung, where are you hurt?”

“Fuck, I don’t know,” Yeonjun mumbles nearly inaudibly, voice tight. He sounds tiny. “It’s just- It’s just water.”

“You’re freezing and most likely in shock,” Jisoo-hyung says from the other side, accepting the multiple coats and sweaters that are being offered from the back and starting to drape them over Yeonjun who quickly draws both knees up into his chest to grip them with both arms. “Regardless of what the airport paramedics said, we need to stop by the urgent care for a thorough check up—”

“No , hyung, I’m fine—” Yeonjun snaps in a high pitched whine, cutting himself off abruptly as his voice squeaks alarmingly. His eyes are big and scared, one shaking hand coming up to cover his mouth and muffle his voice further as he haltingly says, “they said- they said it’s just water.” 

He sounds so strange, all small and scared because of course he is—they all are—but it’s something more than that. Soobin can’t even pinpoint how or what, just that something about the timber of his voice is different somehow—wrong—and Yeonjun’s complexion is so white he looks close to actually passing out. 

Soobin’s mind is racing, wildly speculating that instead of water, maybe it was some form of odorless chemical he accidentally ingested or inhaled. Maybe it’s something that’s affecting his vocal chords. Maybe it will get worse. 

He doesn’t understand why they didn’t just whisk him away in an ambulance just to be safe.

“You need to cooperate and trust us, Yeonjun,” Jisoo says with authority in his voice. “We can’t be certain of the nature of that liquid until the police are able to reliably identify the samples they took. In the meantime, even if you seem fine, something might go seriously wrong and we will not risk your health.” 

“Just wanna go home,” Yeonjun whimpers, voice gone thick and rough with emotion.

“We’ll take you home as soon as we’ve visited a clinic,” Minho-hyung calls back from the front. “We need proper equipment to fully ascertain your physical state, Yeonjun-ah. This is serious. Do you understand?”

Yeonjun grunts a noise that could be either agreement or dissent, sounding choked and on the verge of tears, and Soobin inadvertently knocks Jisoo’s helping hands away in his eagerness to better wrap the dry clothing around Yeonjun’s shoulders himself. 

Yeonjun lets Soobin bundle him up, tilting his head trustingly into the care of his hands as he brings a soft sweater up to try and rub dry the soaked strands of hair. Yeonjun peers up through his fringe and their eyes catch—he looks utterly gutted open in a way Soobin has never seen before. 

His heart swells with something he can’t name , and he doesn’t know why, but it’s terrifying. 

“Hyung, you’re gonna be okay,” he whispers numbly, eyes burning hot, and the next moment Yeonjun’s whole body tilts closer as he makes a pathetic little sound in his throat. 

Soobin opens his arms to gather him up protectively, his heart settling a little as he soaks up the feel of Yeonjun’s head resting heavily against his chest. Beomgyu reaches over the back of the seat to assist in fluffing his hair dry for a while more before the angle makes it difficult for him to remain balanced, and he sits back again. 

Soobin has Yeonjun tucked into his side warmly, rearranging the dry clothing until nothing but the upper part of his face is visible from within the folds of multiple sweaters they wrapped all over his body and head. It’s probably overkill, and any other day they’d be teasing and poking him for the silly image he makes, but right now he looks pale and terrified and jokes are the last thing on anyone’s mind. 

Something about him is so small and vulnerable all buried under the clothing, and even though he’s no longer shivering he doesn’t unfold from the little ball he’s made of himself.

Soobin holds him close, his back aching from the awkward way he’s twisted in his seat, but he doesn’t care. At some point Kai switched places with Jisoo and is now pressed close to Yeonjun on the other side to offer further warmth and comfort, while the other two periodically lean over the back of the seat to touch and pet him reassuringly, asking after his condition over and over until Yeonjun snaps irritably and tells them to stop asking.

The atmosphere is tense with the uncertainty of Yeonjun’s state and the growing realization of the severity of the situation as Jisoo and Minho begin a series of quiet, urgent phone calls they’re too close in the confined quarters to not overhear. Calls to the company and Bang Shihyuk, calls to the PR team regarding the various paparazzi and news channels that had been present at the airport, and the list goes on and on. 

There’s only so much they can do to contain the fallout since it was such a public event, caught on multiple cameras both public and private, and Soobin can only imagine the state of social media right now. He’s low-key jittery with worry and panic, an impending sense of dread seeping through his body as he understands that this is going to be all over major headlines and the internet already. Their first true scandal. 

He’s sure they can weather it, that their company will manage it and things will blow over eventually like any other scandal in the past, but right now he can’t spare any emotional effort to care about how it will affect them later. He doesn’t care about any of that as long as Yeonjun is okay. He has to be okay.

Thirty minutes later the car pulls into the dark underground parking lot of the chosen hospital and Soobin reluctantly relinquishes his hold on Yeonjun so that he can leave the safety of the van.

It’s a jumbled rush of staff once again covering Yeonjun with dark jackets to hide his identity as hospital staff linger at the doors to usher him into the clinic. Soobin doesn’t even get a second glance at his face before the doors are closing him out of sight.

The ride home is quiet and miserable, broken only by a call from Taehyun’s mom who was alerted to the situation through Taehyun’s sister, and listening to his half of the conversation hardly settles Soobin’s nerves. It just makes him further unable to stop thinking about all the things that could go from wrong to worse.

Having experienced the confusing event directly, they truly have no information or clear idea about what’s going on. In fact, the four of them are even less aware of what actually happened than the rest of the world who must be all over the exposed videos and breaking news articles. 

Given what Taehyun tells his mom, the other boy didn’t even see the cleaning ahjumma who initiated the attack, and Soobin is too choked up to open his mouth and share just yet. The airport security had seen and ran after her, so it won’t change anything or help it to make any more sense by interrupting Taehyun's call to say it.

His fingers are itching for his phone even though he’s sure that looking at the mess that awaits online will make him feel like complete and utter shit. It will make this whole thing undeniably real and drag him out of his shocked disbelief, but at the same time not knowing is so anxiety-inducing that he knows he won't be able to bear it for long.

At the urging of their manager he calls home at the same time as the other two, and once they’ve all eventually hung up he peers over his shoulder and catches Taehyun’s eyes. The younger boy nods back, wide-eyed and serious, and Soobin sighs out a slow exhale as he’s reminded that he’s not alone with this. He tries to find some sort of calm center, something positive to focus on, but it’s difficult because nothing like this has ever happened to them before and it feels like their whole world has been turned upside down.

Right now there’s no assurance that everything will actually be okay. No one knows if Yeonjun will be okay, and that’s the scariest part of all.

Minho-hyung declares he’s staying over along with a few other protocol members as they all pile into the elevator up to their apartment, and Soobin is greatly reassured by their familiar, dependable presence. He’s so deeply shaken by the events at the airport, feels young and helpless in the worst way as he truly understands for the first time just how easy it is for one of them to be attacked in public. 

He never fully realized just how vulnerable they are due to their high profile fame. Never even imagined someone might actually try to hurt one of them. It’s scary.

The other members don’t even speak a word, but they all end up gathering together in Taehyun and Kai’s room, piling onto Kai’s bed after Kai dives for his collection of plushie dolls and quietly doles one out for each of them to cling to.

“Okay…let’s get this over with,” Taehyun decides, pulling up his phone and leaning back against the wall of plushies as they all gather close to get a view of the screen.

Ten minutes later, Beomgyu is crying softly again and the rest of them are not much better off. He plucks at Soobin’s sleeve until he wraps an arm around his shoulder and tugs him close.

They’ve watched multiple videos, all largely from the same angle and showing the same thing since the crowd was mostly contained to one side of the arrival hall. The cameras are focused on Yeonjun as he passes by, shaking and obscured by waving arms or the security walking past, only to blur and shake even further the moment the mystery liquid suddenly dumps all over Yeonjun. It’s hard to properly see what’s happening as he drops out of view and the crowd erupts into a screaming, shoving mass of bodies.

Seeing it over and over again doesn’t make it any easier to bear or understand. Seeing Yeonjun collapse like that is utterly terrifying and it feels like it’s now seared horribly into his brain. 

After Soobin mentions that he saw the culprit and describes the whole thing in response to their urgent questions, Taehyun scours around various platforms trying to find a video from far enough behind the main crowd that could have possibly caught her in the lens.

The way MOA tend to focus on a single member or zoom in on the group as a whole makes it surprisingly difficult, but it’s only been a few hours and Soobin hopes something will turn up eventually. Even if there isn’t much they could do with it besides knowing for sure what happened. He doesn’t know if the woman was caught or if they’d be told about it even if she was.

Instead of any solid proof regarding that suspicious cleaning lady, a new thumbnail pops up with an angle they haven’t yet seen and the shocking title: Our Yeonjunnie HURT , and before Soobin can even brace himself for more second-hand trauma, Taehyun is opening the file. 

The audio that crackles from the speakers is more of the by now familiar garbled screams and shouts, but the person filming has crouched down low to the floor, capturing in high resolution a view of Yeonjun sprawled on the ground between a little gap in the bodies of staff and emergency paramedics. Their bodies have shifted just enough to show a glimpse of Yeonjun’s face as someone strips the wet mask off of him. 

Yeonjun’s expression is twisted into a pained grimace, eyes squeezed shut as he visibly gasps for air. It’s clear he’s very much in pain, and even though he seemed mostly fine in the car—more shaken than physically injured—maybe he’d actually hit his head on the way down and was too confused and shocked to articulate himself.  

“Oh my god,” Beomgyu mumbles shakily through more tears, his hand shooting out to replay the video when Taehyun moves as if he’s going to continue scrolling. “What- what hurt him? That shit isn’t water—it can’t be!”

“We’ll hopefully know the answer to that as soon as Yeonjun gets back,” Taehyun says in a steady voice, but Soobin can hear the anxiety in his tone.

“I think he must have hit his head,” Soobin supplies, petting Beomgyu’s soft hair absently to comfort himself as much as the younger. 

“No, but hyung sounded so weird, didn’t you notice?” Kai adds from Taehyun’s other side. He clutches Taehyun’s waist around the mound of plushies in between the both of them. “What if he swallowed some of that, whatever it is…?”

“If it was truly some sort of cleaning solution, ingesting any of that could give him chemical burns down his throat and dangerously erode the lining of his stomach,” Taehyun agrees in his usual logical style, and Soobin does not want to hear that sort of detail right now. Thankfully Taehyun shoots his own idea down. “But in that case his skin would have been irritated or damaged as well—I didn’t see anything like that, did you?”

“They could have wiped it off quickly with something from the emergency first aid kits,” Soobin says even as he hopes for what Taehyun is getting at to be true instead. “If it was obviously chemical burns they would have called him an ambulance, right?”

“Not sure,” Taehyun replies quietly. “That sort of thing needs to be treated immediately, flushed off the skin with running water for at least twenty minutes or more. They might have done something like that…It took them a while to get him to the van, didn’t it?”

“Then they would have sent him directly in an ambulance instead of having management take him to the hospital,” Soobin says again, clinging to the fact that all the professionals vetoed an ambulance for a reason . It must mean Yeonjun wasn’t burned at least.

“I agree,” Taehyun says, and Soobin relaxes gratefully into the support. 

“Thank god they took him to get checked anyway,” Beomgyu sniffles. “I can’t stop thinking about it.”

“He’ll be okay,” Taehyun says reassuringly. “The media making this into a huge story will be the worst part of this whole fiasco, you’ll see.”

Even if the liquid turns out to be some harmless substance that didn’t physically hurt Yeonjun, the attack itself still hurt him. It hurt all of them. 

They are going to be dealing with unknown repercussions for who knows how long, and maybe Taehyun is deliberately saying positive things to encourage and cheer them up, but Soobin desperately wants to believe him.

The four of them wait around in varying states of anxiousness for Yeonjun to return, taking turns in the shower while the others linger in the living area with the TV volume on low so as to not disturb Minho-hyung’s endless rounds of phone calls. The man eventually takes himself to the back guest bedroom with a half-hearted request for them to go rest. None of them listen.

It feels like it’s taking much too long, and that makes him think that something really did go wrong. Yeonjun must be undergoing treatment, maybe he was even admitted to the hospital, but every time he suggests they call Jisoo-hyung to get an update Taehyun shoots him down and tells him to be patient.

Jisoo doesn’t end up giving them a call or any sort of heads up when the appointment is over, as the sudden beeping of the front door half an hour later indicates the arrival of someone. To Soobin’s immense relief it’s Yeonjun.

He’s wrapped up in more than one sweater, a mask secured over his face. He looks undeniably exhausted but strangely skittish as he shucks off his shoes and then stops short right there in the entryway, big eyes darting around the dimly-lit room. 

Soobin is already on his feet approaching him along with the rest of their members, and his heart turns over horribly when Yeonjun shies away from them. When he reaches out to clasp his arm Yeonjun’s body tenses as if he’s barely stopping himself from flinching away and Soobin doesn’t understand what he’s seeing.

“You okay?” he asks before anyone else is able to utter the question. “What happened?”

“It’s just water,” Yeonjun mumbles, but something about the way he says it doesn’t reassure Soobin at all.

“That’s a relief,” Kai chirps from beside them, seeming unable to stop himself from reaching out one hand to brush against the back of Yeonjun’s hand as well even though Yeonjun seems reluctant for physical affection right now. 

The other two shift awkwardly and it’s clear they all are eager to reassure themselves he’s okay, especially since Yeonjun seems so shaken and unlike himself. 

“You don’t have any meds or treatments?” Taehyun wonders. 

Yeonjun shakes his head. He tugs his arm away from Soobin’s gentle grip and wraps both arms around himself protectively, his eyes flitting beyond the wall of their bodies and down the hall to where the bathroom door is shut.

“Someone in the shower?” he asks.

“Yeah, Minho-hyung should be out soon,” Beomgyu explains. 

“Kay,” Yeonjun murmurs. “I need to…to change. And shower.”

Soobin only now realizes that he’s still dressed in the same clothes he had on under his pink puffer all day. It’s been hours, now. Did no one offer him a minute to change into something dry? He’s going to come down with a cold at the very least.

“Need any help?” Kai offers, shuffling closer to him. Yeonjun shakes his head.

“I just need to rest. Don’t worry,” he says quietly, clipped and devoid of emotion. 

It sounds like he’s shut down and numb, like he’s far beyond the point of being able to freak out anymore, and Soobin doesn’t know what to do for him.

His voice still sounds weird, the way he’s talking so quietly like he’s afraid to raise his voice or even speak, and Soobin can’t help but feel suspicious about the verdict from the doctors. If it was just water why does he sound all…so…like his voice has been damaged or something?

“You’re really okay?” he insists, leaning closer in concern, longing for Yeonjun to just open up and accept their support. He’s so timid, and far from reassuring him it’s filling him with a flood of new worries. “Your voice sounds weird. Did you drink some of that stuff or something?”

Yeonjun’s eyes go a little wide and he shakes his head a little. “I dunno. It’ll probably go away,” he says quickly, clearing his throat with a little cough. Even that sounds weird and unlike himself, and Soobin can’t stop his expression from twisting into worry. 

“It’s okay, I trust the doctors,” Taehyun says encouragingly. “I’ll go tell hyung to hurry up in the bathroom, okay?”

Yeonjun nods in thanks and no one tries to stop him as he quickly makes his way down the hall to his room. From the back he looks so small and diminished somehow, like he’s drowning under all those layers of clothes in a pitiful physical representation of his subdued spirit, and Soobin’s heart aches to watch him disappear into his room without a backwards glance. 

“God…hyung looks so shattered,” Beomgyu comments quietly in a thick voice. “What should we do?”

Kai attaches himself to the other boy and squeezes his waist. “It’s been such a long day for all of us. I think we should go to bed,” he suggests. 

“Agreed. If we drag this out any further tonight, I’m afraid Soobin hyung is going to have a hysterical meltdown,” Taehyun says with false exasperation, but the eyes he turns to him are soft and warm.

Soobin rolls his eyes, a reluctant smile pulling up the corners of his mouth. “You’re probably right,” he says, nudging the younger with an elbow. “I’m so tired from the plane I can hardly see straight.”

“We can all check back in again in the morning,” Taehyun says with finality.

They separate to their rooms and Soobin longs for nothing more than to dive into bed and sink into welcome oblivion, but his concern for Yeonjun is still wreaking havoc in his stupid brain and he just wants to check that he gets to bed okay first. 

Someone should be taking care of him after the horrible thing he endured today, and Soobin admits to himself that maybe he selfishly sent the others to bed so that person could be only him.

He settles himself down on the sofa again, the lights turned as dim as they can go, and listens with one ear as Minho-hyung finishes in the bathroom and then trundles down the hall to the guest bedroom. It’s quiet for a while and he pulls out his phone to scroll idly through Instagram as he waits for Yeonjun to come out.  

It feels like ages before Yeonjun’s door finally snicks open, and Soobin turns quickly to see him still all bundled up and peeking around the door frame as if scoping the area. As if he’s sneaking and hopes no one is there. 

Their eyes meet from down the hall and Yeonjun freezes.

“Hyung, you okay?” he whisper-shouts across the distance. “Do you need anything? Wanna talk?”

“Nu-uh,” Yeonjun mutters, jerking awkwardly away from his place and scurrying across the hall to the bathroom like he’s being chased. He snaps the door shut firmly behind himself.

Soobin has never seen him act like this before. He doesn’t know what to make of it. He decides there’s nothing more he can really do but wait for him to be done and try again.

Yeonjun is in the bathroom for a long, long time, without even the excuse of a long, hot shower because Soobin is surreptitiously eyeing the clock and he doesn’t hear the sound of water at all until nearly thirty minutes have passed. 

Eventually the shower comes to life, and Soobin tries to relax and rehearse some of the things he thinks Yeonjun might like to hear when he eventually comes back out, only to startle at the sound of a loud, pained cry from the bathroom. 

He’s already leaping to his feet and sprinting down the hall before he even makes sense of the muffled sound of Yeonjun’s urgent voice that come next, a low string of, “oh my god, oh my god, fuck—fucking shit —”

He wrenches open the door and blinks through the plume of hot steam that billows into his face, just about to call out Yeonjun’s name before the swirl of white clears just enough for him to get an eyeful through the glass door of the shower. Yeonjun’s whole body is fully visible to his panicked sweeping eyes. Between one shocked blink and the next Soobin takes all of him in: 

The beautiful lines of his toned body with water running in rivulets down his demure abs and his perky butt, and those lovely lean thighs tensed just enough to make him look like an exquisite sculpture— 

He’s gloriously naked and holding himself—

He’s holding his cock in one hand as he cries.

And it’s not like he’s never seen him naked or even that he’s never seen his cock before, but he’s never seen him like this… naked and touching that cock while being vocal about it. In the shower. 

For all that he’s watched him for forever and guiltily, guiltily longed to see more of him—for maybe a glimpse of something sexy and amazing like the sight before him right now—Soobin has never quite imagined him like this. How could he ever have even dreamed such a scene up? 

There’s no way he could have known the exact shape of him when he’s…

Yeonjun is…

He’s a beautiful, sinful wet dream, and Soobin should not be watching him like this.

The temporary shocked paralysis that left Soobin standing in the doorway and staring like a pervert evaporates the next instant as he understands what he’s seeing, and now he can’t move fast enough. Soobin jerks backwards frantically, swinging the door shut as fast as he can. 

At the last second he arrests the movement, carefully easing the door shut so it won’t slam and alert Yeonjun to the fact that someone is there—watching him—but now there’s a fine crack between the wood and the door jamb and Soobin can still hear him, so incredibly clearly.

“Oh my god —” Yeonjun groans wetly, his voice gravelly and wrecked, and Soobin burns.  

The rush of the shower isn’t loud enough to drown out his loud, labored breaths, the patter of water on the tiles hardly enough to cover up the little whine that catches in his throat—

And while his hand hadn’t been moving when Soobin burst in to gawp at him, maybe it is now.

Soobin knows he should move away, that Yeonjun obviously deserves privacy as he comforts himself however he needs to in the safety of his own shower, but he just…he wants to be absolutely sure that Yeonjun is…okay.  

He thought Yeonjun had slipped and hurt himself given the sound of that first shout. He didn’t expect to see him like that , and while it’s obvious he’s not hurt—that he’s more than okay physically—maybe he’s overwhelmed mentally and might need someone to…so Soobin should…No. 

What the hell is wrong with his brain? What exactly does he think he should do for him? Help him get off in the shower? Fuck. 

He turns away in agitation, face flushed and heart racing, pacing down the length of the hall only to turn on his heel and come right back again. Hesitating in front of the cracked bathroom door once more he can’t hear anything but the sound of water—he doesn’t even know why he stopped to listen again as if he’s desperate for a single whisper—he’s not! 

He doesn’t know what the hell he’s doing right now. He needs to fucking leave Yeonjun in peace, but he was just so loud about it, and now Soobin’s whole existence has been thrown into utter chaos.  

It’s understandable, he frantically tells himself. There’s nothing at all weird about Yeonjun going for something like that after a harrowing day. It probably has something to do with the incredibly huge stress and trauma of the day causing heightened emotions and sensations to the point his body just craved a very physical release. It’s completely understandable and it will help him to relax so that’s a very good thing, and everything would be fine if Soobin hadn’t walked in on him and promptly lost his entire mind.

Soobin’s reaction right now is definitely not understandable. It’s definitely weird.

He spins away again, trying to calm himself because he’s so hot all over and he fucking shouldn’t be, and he’s only halfway back down the hall once more before the door suddenly swings wide open behind him. 

He whirls around with a yelp, caught off guard by Yeonjun’s sudden appearance—so soon?—and feeling horribly like he’s just been caught. 

Caught watching.

Caught liking it.

Soobin hasn’t even yet regulated his breathing or fought away the heat pooling alarmingly all down low in his gut, hasn’t even fully processed what he’s just seen, and Yeonjun is already there once more in front of him like a vision, nothing but a fluffy towel twisted around his slim hips.

“That was fast,” he blurts thoughtlessly, stunned by the sight of Yeonjun bare chested with his smooth skin all rosy from the heat of the shower. 

His eyes are so big and dark under the tousled wet fall of his hair across his forehead, and Soobin’s throat goes dry. “What…?” Yeonjun says, blinking rapidly as waterdrops roll off the ends of his hair and drip into his eyes. “I thought I was taking way too long. Sorry if you were waiting.”

“No, I meant…” he trails off abruptly as he realizes what he’s about to say, heat flooding his whole body. 

His eyes fix on Yeonjun’s hand which is rubbing up and down his own chest, fingertips wandering slowly as they press deeply into his pectorals as if feeling his own muscles, but his eyes are locked on Soobin as if hanging on his every word, and he’s suddenly not sure he’s entirely awake. He must be dreaming. 

“Oh. R-right. Yeah, you did take forever,” Soobin stutters with what can only be a manic smile, remembering that Yeonjun actually was in there for well over half an hour. He cannot believe he almost admitted to seeing what he’d just been up to in the shower. 

“Um. You okay…?”

“Me?” Soobin splutters. “Are you okay?”

Yeonjun bites his lip, one hand drifting down to his towel to brush over the front of his crotch for a split second before grabbing a proper handful, and Soobin’s eyes nearly bug out of his head. Yeonjun nods distractedly, letting go of himself and exhaling shakily.

“Yeah…seems okay. Even though it’s fucking impossible,” he mutters. “I think…I really…I think I got loopy off of fumes or something. This is crazy.”

Soobin swallows thickly, lost for words. He must have somehow inhaled some of that shit as well because there’s no way the last five minutes really happened to him.

Yeonjun mumbles something about drying his hair and then he’s breezing by Soobin with a curt, “‘Nite,” and hurrying down the hall to his room, leaving nothing but a waft of citrus shampoo behind him. Soobin’s eyes slide shut as he slowly inhales and exhales for the next few minutes, feet planted to the floor no matter how badly he wants to go after him. Yeonjun obviously didn’t want or need him to do that. 

Yeonjun was hurt today, but he’s apparently well enough to…he’s fine, and he deserves privacy to deal with the emotional fallout however he needs to.

Given the way his thoughts race in circles, revolving around Yeonjun like always but feeling infinitely more this time, it takes a little while for Soobin to calm down. The moment he finally feels a little more like himself, and like he won’t do something crazy even though he truly has no idea what that might be…his face promptly crumples.

He rushes to his own room and throws himself into bed. Burying himself under his blanket, he tries to blank his mind. He has to wipe away those images from the bathroom…he has to. He feels so embarrassed and- and dirty. He feels like…

He feels ashamed more deeply than he’s ever experienced in his life, like a physical thing congealing inside his guts, coating every surface and rotting through his tissues at an accelerated rate. Because he knows it’s wrong—that he’s wrong. 

Maybe he’s not necessarily wrong in the way he reacted to seeing Yeonjun jerking off in the shower, because that can be explained away as shocked embarrassment and- and possibly just a normal healthy reaction to seeing something so visually stimulating, but no. The way he’s feeling right now is what is wrong. 

Because he can’t stop thinking about him. He can’t stop the warm clutch of his stomach and the rapid thud of his heart as he thinks and thinks, and longs to have him. To have him like that.

He knows that plenty of people would say there’s nothing wrong with that. Hell, even Yeonjun is proudly out as gay to his family and friends and none of the people who matter have a problem with that. None of them would have a problem with Soobin if he were to…but he’s not. He isn’t. Soobin has never identified that way or considered himself as such. 

His eyes never linger on any of the male idols or celebrities he meets on a regular basis, nor has he ever looked at an attractive guy and thought about having anything with him—sexual or romantic or otherwise. He’s never even fantasized—he’s always enthusiastically jerked off to thinking about women, pictures or videos of women—and it definitely works for him. He loves women a lot—always has.

It never even crossed his mind that he’s not straight, because he is —has always been!—it’s just…he’s only weird like this around Yeonjun. But it’s different. Somehow. He always thought that it’s just because Yeonjun is…Yeonjun: 

A man who is incredibly beautiful, pretty enough to be a girl—prettier even than many girls in truth—and even as Soobin admires his androgynous beauty and his lovely lithe body, he’s always known he’s not, in fact, a girl underneath his clothes, and therefore he’s never thought about Yeonjun like that.  

No matter how beautiful Yeonjun is, he’s still a man, and that means Soobin isn’t—he’ll never actually be sexually attracted to him—

Unbidden images of Yeonjun flushed and naked in the shower rise up once more to swamp his brain, and his body heats up all over again— reacting —when it shouldn’t! He doesn’t know what’s wrong with him!

Soobin curls into a ball with a pathetic groan, pressing his fingers deeply into his closed eyelids. Why does he feel like this over seeing Yeonjun like that? It doesn’t make any sense. Is he that starved for sexual stimulation or gratification that the sight of another man like that turns him on so easily? It’s—it’s wrong.

He’s never been with anyone before, hardly had a chance with becoming a trainee so young not to mention his debilitating shyness during adolescence, so maybe seeing another person exposed so explicitly like that for the first time with his own eyes is more than enough of an explanation. 

He’s sure that he’d be feeling even more than this if he’d walked in on a pretty girl touching herself. His stomach roils and he can’t even differentiate between what’s causing it right now since his thoughts are in shambles and he can’t seem to calm the fuck down.

He absolutely refuses to touch himself to relieve his body from its heightened state of arousal, forcing his thoughts towards anything that could possibly work as a turn off. He knows exactly what to think about, because nothing works as well as the memories of that day in the break room. Memories of what those staff members said burned forever into his brain.

His body floods with shame so abruptly he feels sick, and it works perfectly to subdue his desire. 

It’s upsetting and makes him feel utterly miserable to bring any of that day back to the forefront, but he does it anyway. Even as those men were sexualizing and emasculating Yeonjun and went on an on about undressing him, they also loudly said they weren’t gay, and even though Soobin still shudders and shies away from finding any sort of similarities between himself and them…right now he can’t help but see how they’re there.

Soobin knows he’s not gay, but the way his body is reacting to Yeonjun might indicate that somehow he could be, or something? And maybe it would be better to just pretend. To lie and just…to tell himself he might be gay only for Yeonjun. Is that possible? It sounds like he's scrambling to make up ridiculous excuses to rationalize his own inappropriate behavior, but how else can he explain himself?

It doesn’t feel right or make any sense, but he’s too weary and heartsick over the emotional rollercoaster he was thrown onto today that he forces himself to lay still and relax his muscles one by one. 

Everything will feel different in the morning. He’ll feel different. He hopes.

He’s not sure what to do if he doesn’t…

It doesn’t take very long for him to pass out, exhausted, and when he wakes tired and groggy the next morning all he can remember of his dreams are hazy images of heat and bare skin even though he knows somehow that it wasn’t a faceless woman—it was Yeonjun. The state of his body underneath the covers is more than enough indication that he doesn’t feel differently at all.

In fact, he might even be feeling worse. 

His body is aching and uncomfortable, and as he guiltily slips one hand beneath the waistband of his sweats to ease the pressure and deal with it, he one hundred percent for sure feels worse. He touches himself anyway, harshly quick and efficient, and can’t say for sure what he’s even thinking about when he cums into his hand with a low gasp.

Something is incredibly wrong with him now, and it feels bad. Even though it also obviously feels good—when it shouldn't. That's why it's so bad. God, he doesn’t even know.

All he knows is that he has such a huge fucking problem, and Yeonjun can never know. 

He kept telling himself he had to protect Yeonjun from ill-intentioned men, but now he's gone and crossed some line, visualizing Yeonjun's body to heighten his own pleasure—abusing his privacy and trust—and he understands deep down that those people don't really matter. They are not close enough to Yeonjun to actually matter.

Who he really needs to protect Yeonjun from is none other than himself.

*****