Chapter Text

~Loyalty~

~For Now P1 - Humiliation~

#October 27th, morning

They had filmed variety a while ago. Wooyoung and San had been split into different teams for the games, which kept them on either side of the studio most of the time and made the whole thing go smoothly. Now they monitored it while in a waiting room. When San had walked over to replace Wooyoung at a starting line, they'd almost collided. With the softest gaze ever, San gently moved Wooyoung out of the way with a hand on the small of his back.

"Oh my god, what is up with that look!" Jongho said, turning away cringing.

"What?" San asked, surprised, and Wooyoung realized he'd been smiling at the screen.

"Yeah, what was that?" Mingi asked.

"What?" San asked again and rewound back to the moment.

"Excuse me, love of my life, but let my gentlemanly hand steer you aside so that your delicate frame does not get injured by my hard body brushing past you," Yunho narrated it.

The other guys were laughing. San huffed slightly, more smug than affronted, not taking them seriously at all. He put his arm around Seonghwa's shoulders and kept watching peacefully. Wooyoung said nothing.

Halfway through the episode everyone were sitting at desks, and Wooyoung and San had inexplicably ended up next to each other and their desks much closer together than the others. Wooyoung remembered being bored, and that San had gotten him to throw candy at him that he tried to catch with his mouth. It turned out Mingi had filmed them with a camera they'd been given to film self inserts with. A cut of them had made it into the episode for a few seconds, captioned can't sit still, Woosan.

"How did you even get there," Seonghwa asked, looking around at the other guys wondering if anyone knew. "You're not even on the same team. And why are your desks so close together? Did anyone notice this?"

"They have some kind of superpower," Yunho said.

"When we did the speed questions Wooyoung almost tipped over his desk, so it ended up closer to San's," Mingi said.

"Oh yeah," Hongjoong said. "I started in that seat, at the dance break San and I passed each other so we just naturally switched."

"Weren't we supposed to keep them apart?" Seonghwa asked the group.

"Wooyoung wasn't there when I switched with Hongjoong!" San said, claiming innocence. "He followed me there, kicking Yeosang out of that seat."

Everyone looked at Wooyoung. He made the best innocent face he could, like he had no idea what they were talking about. "I just sat on an empty chair!" They weren't fooled. "Sannie didn't guide me aside like a gentleman, earlier," he snitched to divert attention, "He groped my ass! That hand behind us was nowhere polite, and that face isn't love of my life, it's smug sexual harassment knowing I can't do shit about it while filming!"

San had cracked up into quiet giggles and Seonghwa glared at him, betrayed. Yunho, standing behind San, hit his neck. "You should be helping Wooyoungie," he told San.

At the end of the episode in a talking segment, Wooyoung got loud and obnoxious, flirting aggressively with the judge to gain favor, going as far as touch his hand at one moment. San told him to stop trying to cheat, and Wooyoung glanced at him and thoroughly ignored him. A tiny angry snarl slipped over San's face, and the editors had decided to highlight it and show it as a frame-in-frame with captions.

"Every time I tell you to stop doing something you always look straight at me and ignore me," San complained. "If you're going to ignore me, why look at me at all?"

"Why are you angry that I look at you?" Wooyoung asked, feeling unfairly attacked.

"Because you only look at me so I'll know you heard it and ignore me anyway!"

"I look at you because you're talking!"

"You don't do that when the others talk!"

"The others talk to me nicely!" Wooyoung protested. "You're barking orders like you have some special right to!"

"I do!"

"What? You do not!"

"I do!" San insisted, acting hurt. "I'm your-"

"Best friend," Hongjoong interjected, since they were technically alone but still in a public place where anyone could come in at any time.

"Being friends does not give you the right to order me around, that's not what friendship means," Wooyoung thought.

"You're mine," San said, fearless. "I can't have opinions on what you do with what's mine?"

Wooyoung didn't have a comeback for that because San looked so serious and so genuine, it gave him silly, embarrassing butterflies, so he gestured for help from the others, speechless. Half the group ignored him, the other half was watching their drama unfold with fascination.

"You said you'd behave in public," San added.

"Me?" Wooyoung said, instantly outraged. "You're the one who looked like you'd like to get your hands around my neck." He pointed at the paused video.

"Oh, are you a mind reader?" San asked, not bothering to look. "And that's not a problem in public. It's not a secret that you're extremely annoying."

"Raise a hand if you want to strangle Wooyoung," Hongjoong said, raising his hand. A few hands came up, San's among them.

"You were on my team!" Wooyoung exclaimed at Seonghwa, who had also raised his hand. "I won points for us!"

"Oh you mean during the filming?" Seonghwa said. "I thought you meant now."

"At any given point, really," Hongjoong smiled.

Wooyoung pouted.

San got up, and Wooyoung backed up to hide behind Mingi, but San walked over to Yeosang and Jongho and swung his arm around Yeosang's shoulders to lean in and watch the video. They were re-watching a tissue fanning segment again for some reason. Suddenly Yeosang elbowed San. San backed up a couple of steps, looking at the back of Yeosang's head and holding his chest.

They were called on and went back to work. Later, Wooyoung sat with Jongho at the back of the car, sipping coffee. Yunho distributed some snacks the managers handed over saying they couldn't get them anything more to eat until tonight. "Did you see Yeosang before?" Jongho asked. "Did he actually elbow San?"

Wooyoung sighed. Something was going on with those two, but what. "Have you noticed anything off with Sannie?"

"He seems happy to me."

"He seems happy?" Wooyoung questioned. "We fought for like, 40 minutes straight in there."

"Yeah," Jongho said. "Exactly. He had your attention for 40 minutes. Don't pretend you aren't happy about it too."

Wooyoung almost choked on the coffee he was drinking and coughed a bit.

"Are you?" Jongho asked, more serious. "Happy?"

"I'm always happy," Wooyoung said, because that was the standard answer. Jongho was satisfied and settled in to get some rest while they traveled. Wooyoung amused himself by trying to weigh his answer more carefully.

Hongjoong was probably being catfished and Wooyoung was the only one who knew. Yeosang and San had some kind of fight over him that they refused to tell him about, while at the same time being best friends who left him behind to... look at sexy guys together? He was supposed to somehow figure out what he wanted to do with San, and how, and also by the way, after the conversation with Hongjoong he'd realized that he'd just ruled out girls by default but he hadn't actually tested it, so his sexuality was still a mystery. He was for some reason freaking the fuck out about going all the way and had no idea what to do about it. He was still lying to his family, and San's parents, and his other friends, like Yeonjun who still hadn't answered his questions which was getting a bit worrying. He didn't have self-control, and had to pretend to hate his own boyfriend in public to avoid total disaster; a jealous, pushy boyfriend who to top it off kept provoking him on purpose. At least work was going well and he could breathe now that they weren't promoting

Summed up, his life was chaos, a house after a fucking meteor strike, a whole goddamned clown parade. He sipped coffee and looked around at his members and thought of the concert they were preparing for, Mingi's first live audience concert since coming back, and heard San laugh up front at something Yunho said, and yeah. It was certainly not boring. He was happy.

#October 27th, afternoon.

"Look at me," San said. "Baby, look at me, I'll help you so don't worry."

Wooyoung threw his head back against the wall he was leaning on, both wanting to punch him for being patronizing and thankful he was trying to help, but most of all embarrassed out of his mind. "What time is it?"

"Stop thinking about that," San said.

"Easy for you to say!"

San frowned in worry, as if to say it wasn't particularly easy. "Let me help you," he said, reaching for Wooyoung's hand over himself, pants hanging around his knees.

"No!"

Yunho knocked on the door. "Guys?"

"Should San really be in there?" Mingi asked.

"I'm coming in," Seonghwa said.

"No, wait, don't!" San ran to the door to stop him.

"Should I try punching him?" Jongho asked.

"That's how we ended up like this in the first place," Hongjoong said. "No more punching."

"Everyone shut up and go away!" Wooyoung shouted, embarrassed, stressed, going out of his mind.

"Go away!" San echoed.

"You too!"

San stayed, holding the door to prevent anyone from coming inside.

"You don't have long, Yunho will stay and guard the door," Hongjoong said, and they heard him herd the others away.

Wooyoung wanted to cry. So this was what his career amounted to. Waiting around in a storage closet until he'd be forced to walk in raging hard like a porn star in front of audience, camera crew, staff, other celebrities and literally everyone in the world with access to the internet, to try to dance with San strutting about in front of him, while he could barely chain two thoughts together.

"Baby," San said, still standing by the door. "Just let me help you!"

"No," Wooyoung insisted stubbornly and closed his eyes, trying to reset his mind. Thinking his arousal away hadn't been an option, so he'd figured he'd take care of it real quick. It turned out to not be quick. He was aching, needing to come so horrifically badly his head was spinning, but the more stressed he got, the less his body cooperated.

"Think about something calm," San said, interrupting his attempt at finding zen. It was doomed anyway; the storage closet smelled like cleaning agents and dank air, his mind could only see Jongho's worried face and Yunho's shock.

"I said go away! This is your fault!"

"I'm sorry," San said, fretting but staying.

"I told you not to punch me!"

"It worked last time! I just wanted to help!"

Last time San had been angry and jealous, punched without warning and so hard Wooyoung lost his breath. This time Yunho had been giggling in his ear holding him in place, and San had licked his lips before moving in, and Wooyoung's mind had gone to you like hurting me and I like being hurt. Tensing up his muscles in anticipation and meeting San's eyes, and San biting his lip like he was fucking enjoying himself, it…

"You liked hitting me!" Wooyoung accused him.

"No!"

"You were fucking getting off on it, chewing on your lip like that!"

"No! I… Yunho was... You look really good today, it wasn't about the hit! I'm sorry, I admit I fucked up! Just let me help you!"

"Go away!" Wooyoung tried for the two hundredth time. "San just, out! Out!"

"Try to imagine yourself somewhere else," San tried. "Somewhere safe where you're someone who doesn't have this problem. And you try to be that person."

Wooyoung had been about to keep yelling at him to fuck off, but that was just incomprehensible. "What the fuck does that mean?!"

"Like on stage, when we become different people to tell different stories," San said, like it was the most natural thing in the world.

"Become different people?" Wooyoung repeated, confused more than angry now.

"Yeah," San said, equally confused by Wooyoung not understanding. "You're not your mother's son when you sexy dance on stage, are you?"

"I certainly am," Wooyoung said. His mother was very proud of his sexy dances, in fact. "What are you talking about? You're kitten or tiger, but you're still the same person!"

"Not really," San said, blinking, surprised by the turn this conversation had taken.

"So if I'm having sex with the tiger, I'm not having sex with you?" Wooyoung asked, finding it completely irrational.

San frowned, also confused, finding some gaps in his own argument, and said, "It's me but it's not me."

"I… that doesn't make any sense, I…" Wooyoung ran his hand through his hair. "You're insane," he stated. "I don't understand what you're talking about, it's like telling me to cast a magic spell!"

Yunho banged on the door, just once but it made them both jump. "Five minutes!"

"Fuck it," San said, charged him and pushed him back against the wall. With zero hesitation and zero concern for his stage outfit or makeup, he got down on his knees and got his lips on Wooyoung's burning, aching skin. It was such a relief, Wooyoung gave up and let him do it.

San was looking up at him pretty much the whole time, watching his reactions. He popped off to work him with his hands, quick and hard, and fuck, San knew how to do that so well. He'd learned all of Wooyoung's weaknesses so quickly. Now, of course, when it was San's hands on him and not his own, his body was happy to comply. When his legs trembled, signaling the swift arrival of the end, a smile full of dark satisfaction flew over San's lips, quickly chased away with a snarl. San made sure to not leave any mess behind, tucked him in and fixed his pants, and stood in front of Wooyoung licking his lips clean. His lip gloss was a thing of the past, but it had been sacrificed for a worthy cause.

Wooyoung rested his forehead against San's shoulder, feeling out of control and mortified.

"You taste different," San said in his ear, like he was talking about kimchi.

The contrast between his emotional state and San's casual explicitness disoriented him. "What?"

"Yeah," San said, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. "Does it change, normally?"

"How the fuck would I know?" Wooyoung backed up a step and realized San wasn't affected at all. Just to make sure he swept his hand over the front of San's pants, and San dodged and raised his hands in defense. What, he couldn't touch his own boyfriend? When he took a step forward, San backed away.

San had complete control over Wooyoung's body, from turning him on to getting him off, but hadn't gotten the slightest bit ruffled from sucking him. Like it was work for him, his job as Ateez San to hold the puppy's leash and clean up its messes. "Wow," Wooyoung said, feeling absolutely ridiculous. Humiliation burned in his chest, he had to get out of here.

"Are you angry again?" San asked and followed him out the door.

Yunho was leaning against the opposite wall watching both ways of the corridor. "With one whole minute left over."

"We look okay?" Wooyoung asked him and he quickly looked them over, tugging details into place.

"Go, go, go!" Hongjoong called from the junction in the corridor, waving at them.

"Young-ah. I'm sorry," San tried while they jogged off.

Wooyoung clenched his jaw, forced a smile on his face, and walked in among the cameras. Like they always did, Ateez helped each other stay in the moment when filming. Anything else, any private concerns or emotional states, were left behind for however long it took. He laughed and teased and played, and answered questions and got embarrassed and helped patch things up for the others.

The ride home was a little awkward. The guys were high on the performance energy, but in between the chatting and playing was a subtle tension.

"I'm sorry," Wooyoung told Hongjoong as soon as they came inside the dorm, expecting a scolding.

"I said I trust you and I do," Hongjoong told him, holding up his hands to show he came in peace. "I'm not going to say I wasn't worried, but you handled it this time too."

Wooyoung collapsed onto the couch, exhausted, mortified and worried. Things had been going relatively well, the guys needed to help them occasionally, mostly to remind them, but he'd maybe improved marginally. He could even hug San 100% safely now.

"I'm sorry," San said, walking up to him.

Seeing him made Wooyoung angry again. "I told you not to hit me!"

"I know, that's why I'm apologizing, I won't do it again. But why did we even need to hit you?"

"I think the real question is why did you get even worse from San punching you?" Yunho asked.

"Leave him alone," Seonghwa told him.

Wooyoung got up and went to his room and locked the door to roar into his pillow. Yeosang was in there but didn't say anything, allowing him to freak out for a while to get it out of his system. "I'm sorry," he said to Yeosang as well.

"It's fine," Yeosang said. "You look tired."

Wooyoung sat up on the side of the bed and rubbed his face. "If it keeps being like this I'll get kicked out of Ateez."

"Don't joke about that," Yeosang said. He was on his back in his bed, playing some phone game, not deeming Wooyoung's crisis bad enough to turn it off.

"I just, I can't do this anymore, it's…" Wooyoung ran his hand through his hair, remembering San going to work on him like a handyman fixing a problem, and wanted to be swallowed up by the ground. The humiliation wasn't exactly made better by knowing the other guys had been on the other side of the door, knowing perfectly well what was going on inside. "Aaargh!"

"Don't pull your hair out, Atiny will cry. We've all gotten hard on stage or in front of cameras. It doesn't show as much as it feels like it will, and in the end, it doesn't really matter. Every male idol has had this problem at some point."

"It's not that, exactly, it's just every fucking day, and I feel like a child everyone is managing!"

"Woo," Yeosang said, "it's kind of your personality though, isn't it? You're excitable and spontaneous and… loud. It suits you."

Wooyoung smiled with anger, with outrage, because what the hell else could he do, smack Yeosang in the face with a chair? "It suits me?!"

The door handle was pressed down, and there was a knock on the door.

"No," Wooyoung shouted. "Go away, San!"

"Can we at least talk?"

"No."

"Why are you angry at me? I said I'm sorry!"

"You provoke me on purpose!" Wooyoung howled.

"I didn't do anything today! Young-ah! I miss you."

Yeosang's eyes shifted to the door and Wooyoung knew he'd switched sides and thought San should be let in, so he got up and unlocked the door preemptively. San came inside and locked it behind him, then spotted Yeosang. "Yeosang stays," Wooyoung told him.

Yeosang looked like he didn't agree, but San said, "Sure," happy enough with being allowed inside. He walked over to the beds and paused there for a second, judging how worked up Wooyoung was, before he chose to sit at the safe distance of the foot of Yeosang's bed.

"What do you do, when it happens?" Wooyoung asked Yeosang.

"Nothing," Yeosang said, avoiding looking at both of them and tapping his phone game. "It goes away faster if I don't think too much about it so usually I don't do anything at all."

"You said something calm and safe!" Wooyoung said to San.

"That's what works for me! Why would I say something that doesn't work on purpose? You think I want it to be this way?" When Wooyoung just glared at him, he got up from the bed. "Why would I want to have to stay away from you all the time?"

"You don't stay away from me!" Wooyoung accused. "You're provoking me on purpose! How many times have you grabbed my ass these last two weeks?"

"You come over all the time yourself! Like the other day when you followed me to the desks and even moved your desk closer!"

"I was bored," Wooyoung muttered.

"I'm trying," San said, feeling a bit wronged. "I'm sorry it's not so easy for me to ignore the person I love, like it is for you!"

Yeosang pulled at San's shirt to make him sit down again, before getting back to his game.

San was upset enough that he wasn't pouting at all, instead opting for intense glaring. It made Wooyoung think of what he'd said. "What did you mean, before, about tiger and kitten?"

The difference between private San and his Ateez image was shallow. He looked just as good out of makeup as in it, and showed his bare face all the time. The good boy stuff was no more or less genuine in private, and the cuteness was real although he was less and less amused with intentionally acting cute the older they got. He wasn't afraid to speak his mind, only took care to express himself tactfully. The tiger and the… special interests, were hidden, but because he wanted to look like a good person; he didn't actually need to. And it was kind of obvious anyway, Wooyoung strongly doubted people couldn't see the tiger shine through, like Juyeon had said. Even Woosan was barely censored.

So what the fuck did San mean about not being the same person?

"This San… who am I speaking to now?" Wooyoung asked.

"Your boyfriend?" San said tentatively.

"And that's different?"

San nodded slowly. "It's different from the tiger, or Ateez San. Or, I don't know, I haven't thought about this… in words, before." He thought hard while talking, lips coming out in a concentration-pout, so infuriatingly cute Wooyoung wanted to strangle him. "I don't think I made a lot of sense earlier. I'm not crazy, it's just… trying to be the right person, like acting. I thought everyone does... Is it just me?"

"It's just you," Wooyoung confirmed.

"I talked to Atiny about it, that each song has a story and I'm acting that out with my expressions," San said. "Seonghwa listened to it, he didn't think it was crazy, I don't think."

"Seonghwa is too nice to tell you you're crazy," Wooyoung said. "Wait, being my boyfriend is a role you play?"

"I said it's like acting," San said calmly, not lured back into fighting. "I've told you what kind of boyfriend I want to be, so I try to be that, or as close as I can get."

"What about just San, the real San, not trying to be anything?" Wooyoung asked.

San thought about that for a moment, before he threw his head like throwing the thinking out. "Boring," he said dismissively.

It would be fascinating, and Wooyoung would ask more questions, except each answer he got made him feel worse, like the ground had given way under his feet. San was supposed to be the safe, solid center point of his life, not... whatever this was! Was this why he couldn't figure San out, why he felt like a stranger sometimes; because he was literally someone else? "This is ridiculous. I don't understand, if I'm kissing the tiger it's not my boyfriend?"

Still pouting, with one hand on top of his head as if thinking this much hurt, San said, "I'm just one person. I'm not crazy! I'm not explaining it well. Just forget about this, it obviously doesn't work for you anyway."

"So what is it you do, you turn into someone else and that's why you can be around me safely?"

"Someone who doesn't like you like that," San said.

"You stop liking me?"

"Like that," San repeated. "I'm still me. I still love you."

"But as a friend," Wooyoung filled in. A chill ran down his spine, an idea so horrible he balked at it, his mind replayed the memory in the most detail it could recall, looking for clues. "Earlier today," he said, keeping his voice steady and neutral, "you got me off like that? Like another person who isn't interested in me?"

San had been looking over at Yeosang, trying to ask for help with this insane conversation. Now he turned back to Wooyoung, eyes widening. He sat up straight, his chin came down, Wooyoung knew it meant he braced to fight for things he wouldn't back down on. "We were in a hurry, I couldn't get worked up too."

This was insane. Wooyoung couldn't really tell any difference between his so called roles, Ateez San on stage was the same as Sannie, his boyfriend, in all the important ways. But then sometimes there were those moments where Wooyoung felt like he didn't know him, and sometimes San switched from cute to tiger so sharply it felt like he was possessed. Was this where that impressive duality came from? San clearly thought this way, and that meant to some degree it was real. It felt real.

"You weren't my boyfriend," Wooyoung said. "You weren't even someone who likes me. It's like if Yeosang or Mingi would get me off out of pity?"

"No! I'm not different people!" San tried. "I'm still one person. No matter... who I am, I still love you, always."

"But not like that," Wooyoung said.

"Like what?" San demanded. "Love is love!"

"I don't love you the same way I love Yeosang, or my mother!" Wooyoung yelled, frustrated, confused, scared. "I don't want to have sex with a friend, someone who isn't in love with me!"

"I am in love with you!" San yelled back, also frustrated, also confused, and increasingly annoyed. "All of me! Always!"

"Always? But sometimes you just, what, put on a different shirt and don't want me?"

San opened his mouth a few times, gesturing, looking for words. Wooyoung knew he wanted to think about things and answer carefully, but it felt like he was coming up with lies instead of answering the honest thing instantly. He frowned, making San rush his answer because he knew Wooyoung was impatient. "So if I don't want to fuck you every second of the day, I don't love you?"

"You're not in love with me! That's what it means!"

"That's not what it means!" San paused one second, holding his head, as Yeosang was gesturing at them to lower their voices. The dorm was well insulated, but no need to tempt fate. "You have times when you don't want to have sex with me too!"

"Because I can't or shouldn't! It doesn't mean I don't want to! You can't turn love on and off, it's not a fucking accessory you put on when it's convenient!"

San threw his head back in frustration. "You're not talking about love, you're talking about sex, about… your body, about…"

"Desire," Yeosang filled in.

"Yes! Desire!" San hit his own thigh with his fist as if in victory of finding the word, his body language getting bigger the more agitated he got. "Even if I don't feel desire for a moment, it doesn't mean I'm not in love with you!"

Wooyoung just breathed, trying to figure out… well, anything, actually. None of this made any sense, and the yelling didn't really make it any better. Coming down from the immediate anger he was left with feeling humiliated, by San no less, in that storage closet but also scared because this clearly meant a lot to San and he didn't understand any of it, not the different personalities, not this argument.

"You loved me before you could feel desire too," San said. His voice had calmed down a bit, but his body language was still in uproar.

"As a friend," Wooyoung said.

Some realization crossed San's mind. "Did you decide you were in love with me because you had sex with me?"

"N-no I… I mean, not exactly, I mean in a way maybe but it's not-"

He was frantically trying to figure out what San meant by love that didn't have any sexual desire but couldn't come up with anything. He could pretend the fluttering in his stomach was some super special romantic feeling, but it was obviously sexual. He'd loved San in a platonic way before, but what had changed to make them lovers was that he could meet San's needs and satisfy his desires.

"Un-fucking-believable," San said and got up, heading for the door.

"San!" Wooyoung called. "Don't go! We don't have to get up tomorrow and-"

San turned around and stormed up to him, making Wooyoung wince backwards, and grabbed his shirt to hold him in place. "If you seriously think I'm going to get you off after this, you're the one who's insane," he growled, pushed Wooyoung away and left.

Wooyoung stared at the door, blinking as if reality would change one of the times he opened his eyes. He turned to Yeosang, who was somehow still playing his game. "What just happened?" he asked, wishing someone would help him.

"That may have been the least romantic thing I've ever heard, Woo." Yeosang said, glancing up at him briefly.

"What was I supposed to say," Wooyoung wondered. He couldn't lie San in the face! "Is that something to get so upset about?"

"You were irrationally angry about the whole roles and acting thing too."

"How would you like having someone blow you who has no interest in you," Wooyoung snapped. "And I didn't even know he was doing it! I can't consent to something I don't know about."

"You let him do all that other stuff to you, but he needs consent to switch his own mindset? He's still your boyfriend, isn't he?" Yeosang turned off the game and sat up on the side of the bed. "Besides, you know, people have sex with people without having an interest all the time. Some are professionals! You want to pay him?"

Wooyoung turned away from him. "You always take his side."

"I'm not taking his…" Yeosang sighed. "Okay, but, honestly, I take his side when I talk to you, but I take your side when I talk to him. And he doesn't complain, he thanks me for looking out for you."

"Isn't saying that also taking his side! Which you would since you're still talking to me…" Wooyoung rubbed his eye, tired. "Whatever. He didn't have to leave! We don't have to get up tomorrow so we could just talk it out tonight," by which he reminded himself of the original feelings, the frustration and humiliation. This had been a horrible day already, and it had certainly not improved. He regretted letting San into this room. They should have cooled down separately. "I won't be able to sleep on my own."

"So go tell him that," Yeosang suggested.

He glared at Yeosang, because speaking of humiliation, but then he figured he'd already hit rock bottom and jumped out of the bed. "I'm sorry we yelled over you all night."

Yeosang waved his hand in a forget it. "But for fairness, can you yell over Yunho now if you're not done?" He smiled faintly to underline it was a joke.

Wooyoung left. The dorm was dark and quiet. They'd been louder than ever before this time, so Seonghwa had certainly heard a lot through the wall, but he wondered how much the others had. He put his hand on the door handle to San and Yunho's room and paused. What if it was locked? Then he'd go fetch a knife and pick it. San was sad, that counted as an emergency, and San had given him standing permission to come into his room. He pressed the handle down and the door clicked open.

Yunho's bed was visible first, with Yunho spread out over it, his long arms and legs everywhere, sound asleep. Continuing into the room, Wooyoung found San sitting on his bed with the bear plushie he'd gotten from Yunho in his lap, chewing on the nail of his thumb.

Wooyoung went to push his hand down. San just sat there and let him. A few seconds were spent in silence in the darkness, then Wooyoung hugged him. It took San a few seconds to hug back, but he did, eventually. "San-ah," Wooyoung whispered. "I can sleep here, can't I?" San broke up the hug to look at him and he didn't normally ask, he just invaded. Begging to be let in felt like a new personal low. "I won't be able to sleep by myself."

San wordlessly moved over and pulled the covers further to the side, dropping the bear plushie on the floor. They both slid in under the covers, and San snuggled up to him as usual. Wooyoung didn't know what to say. I'm sorry or I love you, he didn't think San wanted to hear those, and he wasn't sure what he wanted to hear instead, so he said nothing. But just falling asleep like this was too harsh.

Wooyoung pushed himself up on an elbow and tried to lean in for a kiss, just a good night kiss, but San turned his head away. Fine, whatever. Wooyoung kissed his cheek instead. "Good night," he whispered and settled back down. San reclaimed his position hugging Wooyoung, and didn't answer.

#October 28th, morning

Wooyoung startled awake. The first thing he became aware of was that he was alone in San's bed. The second thing was that Seonghwa stood leaned over him. "What?" Wooyoung tried to say but probably just made a noise.

"Just checking that you're alive and have all your limbs," Seonghwa said.

Yunho glanced over from his bed, sitting on it poking his phone. "If you want to check all relevant limbs you'll need to get in his pants."

"Shush," Seonghwa told him.

Wooyoung mumbled a question, and Seonghwa leaned in to hear. "Where is San?"

"Sannie went out," Seonghwa said.

"Out?" Wooyoung sat up, rubbing his eyes. "Don't we have schedule later?"

"Yeah he's meeting us there."

"Did he go work out?"

"No, he dressed like he was meeting someone, like a date-" Yunho paused at Seonghwa's glare. "What? Was there more drama last night? Did you fight?"

"I don't know how you slept through that," Seonghwa said. "Maybe me and San should switch rooms."

"No, I don't think so. If they live next to each other they'll start shouting through the wall," Yunho said. "I don't think anyone wants that."

Wooyoung got up and waddled back to his room, still sleepy but also unsettled. "Where would he go, what does that mean, out," he muttered, crawling into his bed to mope. He checked his phone and had some messages from other people but San hadn't sent him anything.

"Didn't you make up?" Yeosang asked, dressing.

"I don't know," Wooyoung said. "It was more like a ceasefire."

"You can talk to him later today."

Wooyoung tried to call San and message San in two different apps but got no answer. He went around asking the other guys but they didn't know, most of them didn't know San had gone out at all. Feeling lost, without any specific problem to address, Wooyoung called his mom and talked to her about nothing in particular for a while, until she said, "Is something wrong?"

"No, no. Well, I'm fighting with Sannie," Wooyoung told her.

"You two are too close to really fight. It'll be fine."

He knew it would be fine, but it felt better hearing someone else say it. He wanted to ask her opinion on the question of love and sex but he had no way to bring that up naturally. "He asked me about something and I told him the truth but it made him angry. I can't lie either, he hates lying, so I don't know what to do now."

"You don't have to agree about everything, you know," she laughed. "If you choose to love someone you have to accept your differences."

"How do you choose to love someone," Wooyoung asked. "It just feels a certain way. It's not like I decide to, it just happens."

She laughed again. "Oh you're so young," she said, somewhere between sentimental and mocking him. "Of course you choose. Just because you feel angry you don't have to yell; even if you're hungry you choose what and where you eat. The feeling means you want to, but to actually love someone you decide to."

"Isn't love a feeling?" he asked, no less confused now than before.

"It is a feeling," his mother agreed, "but it's also a lot of other things. You and San get along really well, but you could have just stayed good colleagues. You choose to share things with him, to look out for him, to tell him you love him. You got that tattoo together, that was certainly a choice."

"Sorry," Wooyoung said reflexively.

"Don't apologize if you don't mean it. No more! You hear me?"

"No more."

"Don't make promises you don't intend to keep," she scolded again, and he let up a guilty giggle.

"Mom," Wooyoung said, "even if I accept that we have different opinions, maybe he won't. I don't know what to say, how to convince him."

"Hmm," she said. "You've been friends for a long time now. Don't you think you can trust him, even without convincing? I heard this, somewhere; two things are most difficult in love: to trust the one who can hurt you the most, and forgive them when they break that trust."

"I should… trust San to understand?"

"No, trust him to love you, even if he doesn't understand," she explained. "And forgive him, even if it hurts to not be understood."

"Yeah that…" Wooyoung sighed. He sat cross-legged on his bed, and dropped forward, folded up like a little turtle. "That is pretty difficult alright."

"But I know you can do it," she said. "Because you're my son."

That was just too cheesy. Actually this whole conversation was kind of cringe, wasn't it? Why was Wooyoung talking to her about this at all? He was tricking her into giving him relationship advice when she didn't even know it was a relationship. "That was cheesy, mom," he told her. "I have to go."

She laughed at him. "Cheesy? I see. But don't embarrass me on the show today, you know my neighbors watch that, and your aunt!"

"When have I ever embarrassed you!"

She was silent for a beat, like the question was too stupid to answer. "Bye."

"Love you, bye!"

He unfolded from his turtle stance. Do nothing? Sit still and trust San to come around? He hated this advice, he'd rather have been told to crawl on his knees until San took pity. He checked his messages and they were on read now, so San had seen them but not written back. Do nothing. He put his phone in his pocket and headed for the only place where things might make a little bit of sense.

When he stuck his head in Hongjoong's studio, their leader looked up from the couch, curled up with his arms crossed over his chest, blinking dazedly at him.

"I'm sorry were you sleeping?" Wooyoung said and came inside.

"Yes but do come inside," Hongjoong said, Wooyoung wasn't sure if he was being sarcastic or just sleepy. "What time is it? Oh, well, I got a solid five hours, that's more than usual. Go ahead then."

"Go ahead with what?" Wooyoung asked, lifting Hongjoong's legs so he could sit with them in his lap.

"Ask me what you want to ask me."

Was he that predictable? "Can you love someone romantically without having sexual feelings for them?" Saying it out loud he realized it wasn't exactly a problem for Hongjoong to solve, but the guys he normally went to for emotional stuff like this were San and Seonghwa and Seonghwa would definitely be on San's side, so this was still a solid choice.

"Oh shit, I thought you were worried about the show," Hongjoong said, yawning. "Is this Woosan drama again?"

"I don't know," Wooyoung said.

"That is just enormously worrying," Hongjoong declared. "If you don't know, who knows?"

"San, probably. But he left this morning while I was asleep, and nobody knows where he went, and he doesn't answer his phone."

"Yunho must be having the time of his life these days," Hongjoong said. "Okay, I'm prepared, ask me the question again."

Wooyoung repeated it but realized as he spoke that Yeonjun had said, "Doesn't being asexual mean loving people without sexual attraction?"

"It means a lot of things," Hongjoong thought. "I don't know, love and sexual attraction, it's probably individual how much it's connected? For some, sex is just a byproduct, and for others it's the main point. But love isn't really my area of expertise."

"Sannie thinks I fell in love with him because we had sex," Wooyoung said. He didn't even consider censoring himself in front of Hongjoong these days. "And I loved him already! So if I could have romantic feelings without sex, I would have already, before. The thing that changed was the sex. So, I guess I fell in love with him because of that."

"San did not like that," Hongjoong stated, rubbing sleep out of his eyes.

"No, he did not."

Hongjoong shrugged a little, as much as he could lying down on the couch. "Is love just friendship and sex combined, or is that being friends with benefits? I wish you'd ask Seonghwa about this instead of me."

Seonghwa… Seonghwa had said San wanted to be the protagonist in Wooyoung's story. "What is a protagonist?" he asked Hongjoong, because he only had a vague idea.

"The main character," Hongjoong said.

"The hero?"

"No, not necessarily. The character that the story follows, kind of. People mix those two things up because in most stories the protagonist is the good guy. But they can be ambiguous or a bad guy even. Like, we're all protagonists, main characters, in our own stories, even when we're villains."

"If Sannie wants to be the protagonist, doesn't it mean he wants to take over my story," Wooyoung muttered, but quietly, not wanting Hongjoong to hear it. Was San mixing up protagonist and hero? Did he think that to be the main character of Wooyoung's life, he had to be a good guy? Not even an ambiguous one, but a pure good? Wooyoung didn't want to date an anime character. San could be ambiguous, or even bad, and still the protagonist. Hm that kind of meant that…

"A protagonist is kind of the most important person in a story," Hongjoong arrived at.

San wanted to be the most important person in Wooyoung's life? If that was what this was about, this fight was fucking stupid, because he already was.

As Hongjoong thought, his eyes narrowed in increasing disapproval of Wooyoung. "Did you date other guys before him? Did you know you were gay before you fucked Sannie? Are you gay? Does he think you're straight but making an exception for him?" Wooyoung stared blankly at him, not sure where to begin answering the torrent of questions. "I'm going to interpret this silence as that there's some important things you haven't talked about with San, after changing your mind after three years."

Wooyoung groaned. Juyeon and San had talked about exactly that, Juyeon had planted stupid little seeds of doubt in San's head about Wooyoung waking up one day and realizing he was straight. He'd forgotten to tell San that while he wasn't sure what else he was, he knew he was into San; Sansexual. "Yeah, I... Okay, that's true." He scratched his head. "I wanted to cook everyone breakfast this morning, not air another episode of Woosan daytime TV." He made himself smile, despite everything.

Hongjoong smiled too. "Yunho loves that show. I think it's kind of cliche and predictable, it's obvious you'll be together in the end."

Wooyoung paused to look Hongjoong over and thought he seemed a little ruffled. Lack of sleep didn't typically affect him much, and as he'd said, five consecutive hours was a lot to be him, he stayed alive on naps. "Is something wrong?"

"No, I just have a lot to think about, the music…" he stopped and sat up and looked at Wooyoung. "Huh. You already know. I can talk to you. Remember my friend?"

Sitting up had removed Hongjoong's legs from his lap and Wooyoung felt like they'd been grounding him. "Sister-in-law," he said, scooting closer.

Hongjoong shifted away. "She… wants me to look at one of her videos and give her feedback, about the music mainly, how it fits the mood and stuff."

"Okay?" Wooyoung said, and tried to follow him but Hongjoong resolutely put a hand on his shoulder and pushed him back to arm's length. He hadn't expected much else.

"I know it's her job, and I don't think that it matters, I don't want it to matter, but I don't actually know how I'll feel, seeing her this way. I don't want things to get awkward. But if I say I can't watch it, it'll get awkward too."

Wooyoung slipped closer and leaned his head on Hongjoong's shoulder, but Hongjoong dodged out of it again. "Does sister-in-law know that she's sister-in-law and not just a chat friend?" he asked. Even if Hongjoong had avoided the direct physical contact, Wooyoung was left sitting closer.

Hongjoong smiled briefly at the cryptic wording. "Yeah," he answered. "But she also knows that what we are now is all it's ever going to be. She's a realist. And so am I."

"A realist?" Wooyoung snorted, wholeheartedly disagreeing. "You're a romantic like San."

The situation was somewhat similar. San and Hongjoong had both gotten close to someone they really liked, knowing they could never actually be together, quietly trying to avoid the things that might force them to face reality. Wooyoung couldn't do that. He'd say, sure, we can stay like this, and then ask two hundred questions and never leave anything alone, like he'd done with San.

Wooyoung wasn't sure if he was a realist, but he was definitely not a romantic. Maybe he was just ruthless. Fully aware that it might hurt them, even end the relationship, he'd never feel safe until he had sank his hooks in all the way to the bottom. He couldn't live in the no-man's-land, in waiting for someone to leave him, it would be too painful. He'd scratch himself bloody on every wall San put up because he needed all of him; it was everything or nothing, nothing else was good enough.

"If it was me," Wooyoung said, "I would have asked you to watch the video because I wanted to know if it would make things awkward. Even if it might mean things would change, I'd need to know. But maybe she's not like me." He put his hand on the couch right next to Hongjoong's leg.

"What would you do if I didn't do it?" Hongjoong asked, focused on the conversation and not noticing his hand.

"Keep trying," Wooyoung said. "And if that didn't work… probably stop talking to you." He gestured with the sneaky hand and it purely accidentally landed on Hongjoong's thigh.

"Stop?"

"Yeah, because…" Wooyoung remembered the moment he'd realized he was hurting San, playing along but never able to give him what he wanted. He'd kept pushing them forward towards inevitable destruction, because he couldn't hover in limbo. Everything or nothing. "I'd just be hurting you and holding you back, I don't want to be someone who hurts the people I love."

"You say that as if I wouldn't get more happiness than pain even if it's not perfect," Hongjoong said. "As if removing yourself makes people's lives better. What if, even if it's difficult it's still better than being without you?"

They weren't really talking about him, Wooyoung knew that, but Hongjoong's words were still touching. He squeezed Hongjoong's thigh. "That's cute. It sounds like what San would say too. But it's not what I'd do."

"I hate to say, but you sound pretty cool," Hongjoong thought. He looked down at Wooyoung's hand like he was considering whether to push it away or not.

Wooyoung looked at his own hand too. Even if Hongjoong didn't like physical contact very much, and Wooyoung tried to respect that as much as he was able to, he still did things like this years into their friendship, pushing limits to get what he wanted. Hongjoong accepted more touch from him than most of the others, but perhaps that was because he didn't have the energy to fight him every time.

He had to admit, "I sound cool because it's not true." Hongjoong's eyebrows went up. "That's what I should do, what I think is right, but if they don't leave I'm not strong enough to walk away. I'd keep pushing them away hoping they go away by themselves, and then pulling them back because I'm scared of losing them. And then I say they chose for themselves to stay if they stay." It was horrible, and it was exactly what he'd done to San. He was a horrible person. He gave Hongjoong a sad little smile. "That's less cool and more like me, isn't it."

Hongjoong's eyes were soft; he snorted a little like he'd realized he'd fallen for a really obvious lie. "Hm yes, but… Even if you don't succeed, thinking it's what you should do is selfless, I think. Ah, I suddenly understand why there's drama around every corner with you two. San seems to think holding on and trying harder and never giving up is the right way. You can't walk away, he can't let go. Are you in love or are you stuck together?"

Wooyoung felt like he'd been stabbed, like this sadistic squirrel grandpa had cut open his chest. He didn't want to talk about this anymore. "I don't know why I told you this, it's kind of meaningless. She's not like me."

"No, you're right," Hongjoong said. "She's actually a good singer."

Wooyoung gasped, not prepared for it in the slightest and extremely vulnerable. "Kim Hongjoong! That really hurts!" His vocals were a sore spot and Hongjoong was usually happy to boost his confidence.

"Sorry, I'm just teasing," Hongjoong smiled.

"What did I do to deserve that! I'm being open with you!"

"It's very mature of you to admit you're an asshole," Hongjoong said.

Wooyoung was going to cry if this continued. San kept saying he didn't have to put up with Hongjoong's bullying, so he said, "You're no help at all today. I'm going back."

"Aw, don't sulk! Hey, wait, are you actually hurt?"

"Goodbye, porn director Kim."

Hongjoong actually laughed at that. Two-faced, backstabbing grandpa. But then he jumped up and voluntarily hugged Wooyoung from behind, making cute little squirrel grunts. It was only briefly, but enough for Wooyoung to forgive him.

"Hey," Hongjoong said again. "I'm sorry, I didn't realize you were so upset. Come sit down and let me try again." Wooyoung shook his head and left.

Yeosang had written to him asking if he still intended to make them food this morning. He thought about it on the way back. Back in the dorm, Yunho and Jongho were talking on the couch with the TV on.

"Oh!" Yunho exclaimed while Wooyoung walked by. "Right, I forgot, Sannie told me to tell you something when you woke up."

Wooyoung stopped right in front of the TV, to Jongho's frustration. "What?"

"I was half asleep when he told me, I can barely remember, there was something…" Yunho snapped his fingers. "Right, he said to tell you he gave you a good morning kiss before he left."

"What?" Wooyoung said, like an idiot.

"Is that important?" Jongho asked.

"Why didn't you tell me that! Fuck!" He'd spent the whole morning being emotional and bothering everyone including his mother, and it was all Yunho's fault!

"Apparently it's important," Jongho noted.

"I forgot. It was so early," Yunho said.

"How could you forget that! Did you not tell me on purpose to create more drama?"

"I forgot! It's just a kiss!"

"It's not just a kiss," Wooyoung exclaimed, making a very unflattering imitation of Yunho's voice. "Sannie told you so I'd know we're okay! I've spent the whole morning freaking out for no reason! I was going to make you all breakfast!"

There was a second of silence in which Yunho and Jongho looked at each other in silent agreement that Wooyoung was out of his mind and painfully loud.

"There's still time, you could still make breakfast," Jongho suggested.

Wooyoung glared at them. "Not for your sake, it's because Yeosang asked me to!" He stomped off into the kitchen.

"But we can still eat right?" Yunho carefully asked.

Everyone ate together. While they were cleaning up after the food, Wooyoung packed up a little box with the best pieces and hid it in the fridge. He did a simple workout in the dorm with Mingi while Yunho and Jongho played games, shouting at each other across the dorm instead of talking over voice chat until Seonghwa exploded about it.

Later, Hongjoong came back to change clothes before they left and when Wooyoung went to get some water, Hongjoong was sitting in the kitchen eating.

He looked at his phone and San hadn't answered. He didn't expect him to, but he was just checking anyway so he wouldn't miss it, just in case. He wrote a new text telling San that Yunho hadn't passed on the message and that's why he'd called. Then stared at the phone screen for a moment to see if San read it right away. He didn't.

Wait, he and Yeonjun had a group chat that San was in. He picked out the phone again and checked it. No one had written in it for a while so he asked Yeonjun what he was up to today.

Mingi came in and got his juice bottle from the fridge to pour himself a glass. "What's up?" he asked. "San not answering?"

The only reason Mingi knew anything about this was that the other guys had gossiped to him, so Wooyoung threw him a glare.

"I'm not judging, I think it's cute," Mingi defended himself.

"What's cute?" Seonghwa asked, coming inside.

"Nothing." Wooyoung glanced at his phone again and San had read the messages in both the group chat and the private chat. He didn't expect answers, it was just nice to have signs of life since no one knew where he was or what he was doing. He wrote another text telling San he didn't need to answer or anything, he knew he was busy. Wait, fuck, do nothing, his mom had said. Shit.

When Mingi opened the fridge to put the bottle back Wooyoung realized the box was gone. "Kim Hongjoong!" he exclaimed, spinning to Hongjoong, who flinched. "That was for Sannie!"

Hongjoong looked down at the box in front of him, and back up at Wooyoung. "It wasn't labeled," he said.

"Did you eat it all?" Wooyoung pulled the box closer to check. "There were other boxes in front of it with the leftovers!"

"Yeah but it seemed annoying to open them all, this one had everything," Hongjoong said, chopsticks hovering in the air.

"It's not a crime, you should have labeled it," Seonghwa told him and wrestled the box out of his grip to push it back to Hongjoong. "Make a new box from the other leftovers."

"Aren't we meeting San on location?" Hongjoong asked. "Won't he have eaten already?"

"You don't know that, nobody knows where he is or what he's doing, maybe he's been too busy to eat!" Wooyoung shooed Mingi away from the fridge to pick everything out again to make a new box, huffing at how the best pieces had been lost to a thieving squirrel. Mingi was watching him with childish happiness. "What are you smiling at?" Wooyoung muttered.

"You're like a housewife," Mingi said. Seonghwa kicked his shin. "Ah!" he slapped his hand over his mouth and stared at Wooyoung with wide eyes, too afraid to say the wrong thing to dare to apologize. Wooyoung stared back.

"More like a school girl packing lunch for her boyfriend," Hongjoong said.

"Wha-!" Wooyoung turned his attention there instead, and Mingi slipped past him to hide behind Seonghwa. "Shut up, this is your fault! Why are you so mean today!"

Hongjoong grinned, fearless, and cooed like to a baby, "Are you cutting little octopus faces on the sausages too?" He cracked himself up, Seonghwa turned away to laugh into his hand but returned with a scolding scowl.

"Joongie," he said, tapping Hongjoong's shoulder. Enough.

"This is the last time I cook for you," Wooyoung threatened, finishing the second box. "Bad squirrel."

"Sorry, sorry," Hongjoong smiled. "You're just adorable."

"This is bullshit and you all know it," Wooyoung told them, sweeping an accusatory finger over them before pointedly taking a post-it and labeling the box Do Not Touch before sticking it in the fridge. "If it was San doing this you wouldn't call him a housewife!"

"I'm sorry," Mingi said. "I keep saying the wrong things, I just mean you're cute, both of you, together!"

"We're only teasing," Hongjoong assured him. "And if San were here packing lunch for you, the only reason we wouldn't call him a housewife is that we'd be worried he'd lost his mind." Mingi nodded enthusiastically.

"Are you done?" Seonghwa asked Hongjoong, took the empty box from him without waiting for an answer and started washing it in the sink. "We need to go soon."

"Whatever," Wooyoung told them and headed out of the kitchen.

Mingi followed Wooyoung to the couch. Wooyoung checked his phone again. San had read the new message. So even if he was busy, he still took the time to check. Maybe everything was fine? It didn't feel fine. If San really thought Wooyoung was only with him because he hadn't realized he was straight, he'd be in so much pain. Wooyoung typed I love you but didn't send it since San had asked to not be bothered. Are you in love or are you stuck with each other? He was going insane, he needed San to hug him.

"I'm sorry," Mingi said. "I really don't mean it like that though, there's nothing wrong with being a housewife, I don't think you're… feminine or anything, or… I'm not sure why you're mad, actually?"

"It's fine," Wooyoung told him. "I'm just messing with you."

Mingi shook his head, not believing him.

"Why is San the guy in Woosan, exactly, anyway?" Wooyoung demanded, annoyed at San and unfairly taking out his frustration on Mingi on a whole other subject. "Just because he's taller? Or because he looks like an anime villain on stage? Because he can fight?"

"I don't know. I wasn't aware someone had to be the guy, or what that's supposed to mean, exactly. You're both really cute, you can both look pretty tough and I don't know which one of you would win a real fight."

"Not me," Wooyoung said. San could be pushed around until 99 but on 100 he flipped the switch and became the tiger, no limits, no more nice guy.

"Really?" Mingi sounded surprised. "But you're pretty athletic and we all know you call the shots."

"Fighting isn't about calling shots." Wooyoung's phone vibrated, he instantly checked it. Yeonjun had written in the group chat, San told me to tell you to stop sending him messages. Asshole. Didn't even pretend to answer Wooyoung's question either. Those two talking behind his back was incredibly annoying; Yeonjun was his honey, he'd only shared him with San out of the goodness of his heart, why was San stealing all his best friends.

"Now that I think about it," Mingi said, "it has to be really annoying to be bisexual and everyone assumes you're gay, and to be a switch and everyone assumes you're a bottom, just because San is the way he is."

"Whoa," Wooyoung said, because those were a lot of words he hadn't expected out of Mingi's mouth, and certainly not arranged like that. He wasn't sure how Mingi had arrived at all this with such confidence, but he wasn't sure how to ask about it either. How would he explain not having had a sexuality at all just months ago? So he chose the one thing he could ask about. "What do you mean the way San is?"

"You know," Mingi said, "he hates being held down, for example, he doesn't like tight necklaces or bracelets either. You're the only one he allows to grab his collar and things like that. If I do it he really, really hates it. He accepts Yunho hugging him but only for a second or two. It's always been like that. I thought you were humoring him and letting him act like the guy, all the way back from the start, to be nice. That's not how it is?" He looked like someone had told him Santa wasn't real. "You hate it?"

"Um, no, I don't hate it, or," Wooyoung's mind was exploding in all directions, with so many things to consider. "We haven't really talked about it like that," he said. Except they had. San had admitted several times that he had trouble accepting himself as gay, that he'd been able to only because he'd come to see himself as a top, and he'd said that he wouldn't want people to know if he bottomed. Wooyoung had considered it preferences, identity, but now that he thought about it, it sounded like insecurities. The way Woosan was had developed naturally, but maybe he was making space for San.

Last time Mingi had implied things and Wooyoung had gotten insecure he'd taken command of San once and that had helped. Since then he'd never even considered doing it again, for no reason because San hadn't had anything against it. In fact he kept saying it had been really sexy, and now he'd even offered to bottom. Sure, he didn't want anyone to know about it, but he was fine with it in private. So if Wooyoung wasn't being passive for San's sake, then... whose image was he keeping up, whose insecurities was he humoring, actually?

"Time to go," Hongjoong said, passing through the living room.

"Um, we can continue this conversation tonight," Wooyoung told Mingi. He had a lot of questions, and now it seemed like Mingi might be able to answer some of them.

"Sure," Mingi said.

Wooyoung packed San's food box in his backpack, wrapped up to keep it a good temperature for as long as possible.

San was already at the salon getting his hair and makeup done when they arrived. He was chatting with the staff, appearing normal and relaxed. Wooyoung took the chair next to him and San gave him a brief smile in greeting. Wooyoung had looked forward to seeing him, but actually laying eyes on him brought back the memory of the humiliation yesterday and the feeling of not knowing who he was anymore. In an instant he was back to being upset.

San looked over again, and he realized he was staring and snapped back forward to look at the mirror. None of it showed on his face. Which was a good thing, being in this profession, but the anger was swallowed by loneliness. He'd spent the whole morning worrying that San was hurting and trying to figure out how to fix things. No one, not San, not his mom, certainly not Hongjoong, not even he himself, cared that he was hurt too. Seonghwa only cared about his physical safety, in a kind of overbearing way. Whatever, no point in wasting time on feeling sorry for himself.

Once everyone were done they piled into the van.

"Did you have a good morning?" Seonghwa asked San, who nodded.

"Did you buy me a birthday present?" Wooyoung asked him. San snorted and didn't answer, a few of the guys rolled their eyes.

"Where did you go?" Seonghwa asked.

"Road trip," San smiled. "I just looked at the sea for a while, it was nice."

"By yourself?" Mingi asked.

San licked his lips, smile fading. "Yeah."

Glances were exchanged while San bent down to correct his shoelaces, and most of them in Wooyoung's direction. They all knew he'd lied. Wooyoung picked up his phone. Who would San meet? Yeonjun and his guys were out of town. He wouldn't meet Hwiyoung on his own, he thought Wooyoung wouldn't like it. There was that guy, Zuho, that San had mentioned to Juyeon… Juyeon? He scrolled through his phone contacts until he realized he'd saved Juyeon under Alcohol King, for his dance at Kingdom. He couldn't suddenly text Juyeon out of the blue to ask if he'd met San, but he was a bit worried that Juyeon might have fueled San's insecurities rather than helped with them.

"Did you eat something delicious?" Seonghwa asked San.

"No I forgot the time, I just had some decaf," San said, and sighed. "I didn't eat breakfast either. If we have to play games for food, please do your best!"

Seonghwa raised his eyebrows at Wooyoung. He could feel the other guys looking at him while he dug out the food box from his backpack and folded away the wrapping. He felt pathetic doing this, mostly because he was ridiculously invested in that San would be happy. If he acted cold and uncaring Wooyoung would... No, he was determined to give it to San, no matter what.

"Oh is that for me?" Hongjoong said from next to him, pulling him back out of the darkness of his mind. "It smells good."

"Hey!" Wooyoung smacked his hand away. "You already ate one!" He held the box out to San, who sat behind him.

San stared at him. "What…?"

"Eat it," Wooyoung told him, not looking at his face.

"Did you bring this for me?" San asked, accepting the box with a big smile. He opened the lid and made happy noises. "This is home made! You cooked this for me? Young-ah! Thank you!"

Wooyoung turned forward again, proud of himself for keeping with his decision to bring San food. He was going to be a good boyfriend, even when San made it fucking difficult.

"Itadakimasu!" San sang, splitting the chopsticks Wooyoung had taped to the lid and digging in. "Oishii desu!" Like the voice-over of a low quality anime.

Wooyoung hid his face as all the conflicting emotions got shoved aside for second hand embarrassment. Next to him, Hongjoong was snorting and giggling, eventually shaking Wooyoung by the arm, his brother-in-arms in the great battle with embarrassment. The other guys were in similar condition, while San sat in the middle eating, smiling like a happy cat at the food and the chaos he'd caused.

#October 28th, evening

Everyone tumbled into the dorm, Mingi stopped right inside to check social media and Yunho had to physically lead him aside so the others could enter. Hongjoong stole more food from the fridge and took off again, while Wooyoung yelled "Thieving squirrel!" after him. Some of the others also left for various activities.

San followed Wooyoung into his room and only briefly asked to make sure Wooyoung wasn't heading out for more work, before kissing him. Wooyoung let him for a bit and then tried to slip away but San had made up his mind and kissed his neck when he didn't get access to his lips, hands wandering.

"San," Wooyoung protested, unable to resist smiling. "I was actually… San! I was going to talk to Mingi about something." Yeosang was right there! Looking at them like a deer spotting a wolf.

"Later," San said.

"There won't be a later," Wooyoung said, knowing them.

San nudged his ear with his nose. "I missed you. I want to get you off. You're like this already," he said, nudging Wooyoung's crotch, "so let me help you."

"San!" Wooyoung's body reacted predictably, but his mind went straight to that stupid storage closet, the stagnant air and loss of control, and the fact that San had taken the little control and self-respect he'd clung to with absolute indifference – no, with dark satisfaction even. He wants you to be weak so he can be strong, Seonghwa had said. No, he shouldn't think about that, it was just stories. "I want to talk to Mingi," he said, forcibly peeling San off him.

Confusion and fear flew over San's face, unguarded, and he backed up a few steps. "Okay?"

"I'll come find you in a bit." He headed for the door, but didn't like to leave it at that. "You can hold out ten minutes, right?"

"Yeah, sure, okay." San ran his hand through his hair, resigned, and the lack of pouting was making Wooyoung uneasy.

"Sorry," Wooyoung added, to Yeosang.

Yeosang gave him a quick smile. "San-ah, can you help me, something is wrong with my playlist," he said, picking out his phone, and Wooyoung was infinitely thankful that he kept San company.

He went to Mingi's room, where Mingi and Seonghwa were sorting some piles of papers on his bed. Jongho had left, so no one else would probably show up.

"Hey!" He set up a charge.

"No! Don't!" Seonghwa said.

"Wooyoung!" Mingi shouted.

Wooyoung jumped into the bed, careful to not land right on top of the papers but all the same tossing them up in the air and messing up their sorting. Seonghwa sighed and held his forehead, Mingi whined and pushed him out of the bed on the other side. He fell out with a giggle and a yelp, and crawled back up to sit with them, Mingi bumping his shoulder to check that he hadn't gotten hurt.

"What are you doing?" Wooyoung asked.

Seonghwa said, "Someone asked Mingi about rap lyrics in-progress or old ones, so we're looking through his old notes."

"You wrote them on paper?"

"Sometimes," Mingi said.

Wooyoung picked up a paper. "This doesn't make any sense though. What would be the point of posting it?"

"Nobody asked you for help," Seonghwa said. "Go away if you're going to be judgmental."

"Okay, fine. Mingi?"

"Wooyoung?"

It didn't really bother him if Seonghwa took part of this conversation, it might bother Seonghwa but he was free to leave, this paper-sorting activity was hardly life or death. "Can I ask you something?"

"Sure, shoot!"

"There's a thing about Sannie where, if I'd known about it maybe I wouldn't have done certain stuff together with him, but now it is how it is so should I just let it go and not be angry?"

"That's really hard to answer without knowing what it is," Mingi thought.

"I mean in general it's better to err on the side of caution and tell people things, so they're informed," Seonghwa suggested.

"Did he not tell you because he knew you wouldn't like it?" Mingi asked. "Because then…"

"Then it's bordering on assault," Seonghwa said, frowning.

"No, wow, no! He didn't think I would care," Wooyoung hurried to clarify.

"Do I need to talk to San about something?" Seonghwa asked.

"No, it's fine, I just wanted your input, you don't have to do anything," Wooyoung said. He felt a little justified at least. San had turned that whole conversation around to get angry at Wooyoung. He was reminded of what more Hongjoong had said last time, about San's bad sides. "Did you really say San makes me take the blame for shit?"

Seonghwa looked surprised, then smiled. "Who told you that?"

"Grandpa squirrel."

"Funny, since Hongjoong told me to stop talking about that with you. Yes, I did say that."

"I was angry at him for something perfectly legit, you just confirmed that, but he turned that whole fight around to get angry at me for some other reason. And then ran off on some road trip. And now he's acting like nothing happened," Wooyoung complained, just needing to vent. "He's definitely making everything my fault. But what am I supposed to do about it? Start another fight, that's going to end up my fault too?"

Mingi patted his back in moderate sympathy, probably thinking their fighting was genuinely Wooyoung's fault more often than San's.

"I think I should go and talk to San," Seonghwa said and got out of the bed.

"Oh wait, no! Don't, don't make this weird, hey! Seonghwa, don't tell him I said all that!" Seonghwa just left. Wooyoung looked at Mingi, needing reassurance that the end times weren't coming.

Mingi was wearing a faint smile, clearly not worried.

"Umm, why do you think I'm bisexual?" Wooyoung asked, returning to his original intention with coming here.

"Hm, didn't you say so?" Mingi wondered.

"I haven't said anything."

"I could have sworn you did but maybe I just guessed an option, since San came out and you didn't."

"There's more options?"

Mingi laughed, and then realized he was serious. "Uh, yeah. You haven't, like, checked it out?"

"You have?"

"I think it's interesting," Mingi said. "San has been talking to me a lot lately, so I had to learn stuff to keep up, and there was so much that I didn't know, it's kind of mind-blowing. Love can be so many things in so many different ways, isn't it amazing?"

That was new. "It can be different things?"

"It's not like there's a checklist for what counts as love. Isn't the important thing that the person you love feels loved?"

Wooyoung had come here with questions but he hadn't expected to get a useful answer to this one. "That is so stupidly simple," he said.

"Probably not so simple in practice," Mingi thought. "Like San, straightforward in theory, not so much in practice."

"You said it's always been that way, that he hates being held down?" Wooyoung asked.

"As long as I've known him," Mingi said.

"I didn't really know about it," Wooyoung said.

"He freaked out on me and Yunho really early on, and after that we gave him a lot of space. By the time you joined it basically never happened anymore because we avoided it, and he doesn't freak out with you." Mingi watched him thoughtfully for a moment. "Maybe if there's a good moment I could show you, it's not dangerous or anything."

"Uh maybe we shouldn't trigger him on purpose," Wooyoung thought.

"Actually he wasn't particularly worried about it, I don't think he'd mind. I think it upset us more than him. But anyway," Mingi said, with carefully managed curiosity, "was I right about the other thing?"

It took Wooyoung a second. "Switch?" he said. He could guess roughly what it meant. "Are there a lot of other options for that one too?"

"More like… subspecies," Mingi smiled. "Nothing is set in stone, you know. It just feels like you're… free. So bisexual, switch, versatile, doing whatever you feel like, seems more like you. But maybe the most like you is to not care about labels at all?"

Wooyoung smiled, feeling shy, a little flattered but mostly seen and accepted. He'd been thinking so much for months, clearly he should have talked to Mingi to begin with. "Maybe I should have a coming out party too." He raised both arms in cheer. "I'm Jung Wooyoung, and I am everything!"

Mingi laughed and hugged him, squishing him against his side. "But it's annoying, isn't it? To have people assume things because of Sannie."

"It's not just because of him, I think I contribute quite a lot too," Wooyoung said and settled in with Mingi comfortably. "I don't know why it bothers me either. I didn't think I cared about all that. I didn't care about it, before we were boyfriends."

"Hmm," Mingi said. "Have you ever been with someone the other way?"

"The not-Choi-San-way? No, I- I mean what do you mean been with? I mean, San and I, we haven't, we're not, ah fuck." Why was it so fucking difficult to say? Mingi's eyebrows were slowly rising. "Help."

"Have you ever topped anyone?" Mingi tried.

"No," Wooyoung answered, relieved.

"I think I would feel like it's hard to know who I am, if I am two things and haven't tried both. Well, I don't think San is going to let you try anything, with someone else or with him," Mingi admitted. "He doesn't freak out with you though so maybe you could, like, powerbottom?"

Wooyoung broke into giggles, not sure what that meant but it sounded funny. Mingi sank into thoughts, about the issue at hand perhaps.

He scooted away from Mingi and pulled up his phone. Now that Mingi mentioned it he wanted to check something. He opened the porn page San had shown him, he still didn't know any other good place so it was the go-to now. This time he stayed on the mainstream page and clicked the first one that seemed not terrible. The woman looked kind of cute, in hot pants and sports bra, making poses for the camera while pretending to work out. A guy came in, things abruptly progressed and then he was sucking on her chest while digging his fingers deep inside her.

"What are you doing!" Mingi exclaimed, when her moans got loud enough. When Wooyoung just glanced up at him and grinned, he leaned over and checked the screen to confirm it was what it sounded like. "Why are you… Don't do that here!" he said, pushing at Wooyoung's hand holding the phone, blushing furiously. "Wooyoung! Turn it off!" Wooyoung tried to keep the phone out of reach of Mingi's very long arms, laughing.

"Why are you blushing, aren't you a love expert? Isn't this the stuff you and Yunho watch?"

"San!" Seonghwa called outside.

The door slammed open and San stormed in, stopped inside and stared at the scene. Wooyoung wasn't sure what was going on in the video anymore but she was being very loud, and Mingi was getting more desperate. He threw himself over Wooyoung, and in an effort to not fall over the notes and mess them up again, Wooyoung took them both tumbling to the floor on the other side of the bed from the door.

"San!" Seonghwa caught up with him. "I'm sorry, I shouldn't have used that word, it's not what I meant and it's not what he said."

"I said don't tell him what I said!" Wooyoung complained, and squealed when Mingi tried to dig his hands under him to get to the phone, that he held under his chest.

"It's okay," Seonghwa said, perhaps to San, perhaps to them, perhaps to himself.

"What are you doing?" San asked.

"Confirming if I'm bisexual!" Wooyoung laughed, trying to crawl around the bed away from Mingi, while Mingi kept pulling him back. He held up the phone with the screen directed at San and Seonghwa. "Like this!" Seonghwa was shocked into laughter.

"I am so fucking done with..." San stomped up to them and took the phone from Wooyoung, turning the video off. "Jung Wooyoung."

"Thank you," Mingi said.

"Awww," Wooyoung said. "Oh you're really red!" He laughed some more at Mingi's face. "Like it?"

San was looking at him like he couldn't believe what he was seeing. "Jung Wooyoung. Seonghwa said you were sad," he said.

Wooyoung rolled over flat on his back on the floor to look at San, still chuckling, panting from the struggle. "Sad? I'm never sad." San appeared a little shaken though. Wooyoung held out his hand and San pulled him to his feet.

Wooyoung tried to take his phone back and San held it away from him. After failing to reach a couple of times, Wooyoung put a knee in his hip and San made a hurt noise and backed away from him. "Stop it!" San said, pressed his lips together and put up his hands in defense for any further assaults, looking more cute than intimidating but looks were deceiving.

"Then give me my phone," Wooyoung said, holding out his hand.

San thought about it for a second. "Come with me," he said, grabbing Wooyoung's arm.

"No, why," Wooyoung protested and smacked his hand. "I'm still talking to Mingi!"

"You're done," San decided, pulling him along.

It gave him happy little flutters when San was pushy like this. Wooyoung stuck his tongue out and pretended to struggle, not putting up any actual resistance at all. "Seonghwa! Mingi! Save me!"

Seonghwa didn't fall for the act. Mingi asked, "Wooyoung-ah, do you really hate playing along?" Getting that heartbroken worry in his eyes again.

Shaking his head, smiling, Wooyoung winked at Mingi, and Mingi was happy again.

Wooyoung had to turn and actually follow San to not crash into the door frame. "Bye!" he said over his shoulder. Then he was dragged out, and continued to be all the way to San's room. He sort of parked his kidnapping victim in the middle of the room and went back and closed the door. Wooyoung went and dismissed the stuffed animals to Yunho's bed.

San snorted. "Presumptuous?"

"Wasn't this was you wanted before?" Wooyoung said, making innocent eyes.

"That was before Seonghwa came in here and told me I'm a horrible person."

Wooyoung snorted into laughter. It wasn't actually funny but San's devastated expression, and the fact that he was still giggly from Mingi, was too much emotional input at once. San made a mini snarl and crowded him back until his legs hit the bed and he sat down in it, putting a hand on San's hip for support.

"You turned down sex to go tell Mingi I'm awful?"

"I went there to ask them if they thought it was wrong to trick someone into having sex by not telling them the truth." He looked up at San in a challenge.

"I didn't trick…!"

Wooyoung stood up, forcing San to take one step back to avoid getting crashed into. "We can talk about this, or I can go to bed," he said, voice calm and steady. He wasn't going to fight, but he wasn't going to just let it go either.

San just stood there for a long moment, wheels turning but not getting anywhere, and Wooyoung only got more and more annoyed. Finally San asked, "What this?"

"This," Wooyoung snapped, and had to take another deep breath. He wasn't going to fight. Anger was a feeling, his mother had said, but yelling was a choice. "What happened yesterday. In the closet."

"We already talked about that," San said, still not getting it. "That since you don't think love and desire are separate, you feel like I stop loving you when I turn off desire."

Wooyoung shook his head. "You don't even know what happened," he realized.

"I know how it feels to think someone doesn't love you!"

"No!" Wooyoung shoved him, both hands to his chest. Then regretted it, but it was done now. "I told you to go away, like fifteen times! I said I didn't want your help! I told you not to punch me, and you did that anyway, and I told you to go away and you fucking blew me against my will!"

Silence fell over them like a thick, suffocating blanket. Wooyoung was breathing fast, and thought he saw San's chest rise and fall to the same quick rhythm. He'd gone too far, pushed him, raised his voice and been too harsh. The whole being angry doesn't mean you have to yell wasn't working out very well for him.

"Wait, wait, I don't mean it that way," he retreated. "I didn't say no, that's what we agreed, only no means no. I feel so stupid and then nobody listens to me, not even you. Knowing you didn't even want to, it feels…" He turned his back on San, struggling to keep his head clear.

"It's not that I don't want to do it."

"You don't feel anything, you said so yourself!"

San thought hard. "Back when we were just friends, you were willing to kiss me to help me with the jealousy, even if you didn't like me that way."

"That... honestly, it felt like shit, San. I don't want you to feel like that."

San blinked a few times. "I know, but it was bad for you because I was a pushy asshole and you were scared of me." Wooyoung shook his head and San said, "Yes, you were. That's not how this is. I don't feel bad about it."

"I wasn't scared of you," Wooyoung insisted, but they couldn't get derailed into that. "Whatever, that's one thing, but then it's... all of this is new for me and I need to know what's going on, with you and with us and... you can't just do things!"

San was looking mildly bewildered more or less permanently now, like he was navigating completely new territory in thick mist, but the confusion rose and Wooyoung had to swallow down more anger.

"I'm talking about the role switching stuff! If you literally think of yourself as different people, shouldn't I know who I'm having sex with?"

"I'm not different people! Okay, okay," San said, gesturing at him to not blow up, "I'm sorry. I hadn't really thought about this before, it was just something I did, I didn't realize it mattered to you. I won't do it again, I promise. I managed to fuck up literally everything? When Seonghwa came over before, he said you seemed like you were censoring yourself, and that he needed to ask me to my face what really happened, because it sounded like I'd made you do something you really didn't want to do." He rubbed his fingers, distressed.

"No, no, that's not what I said, or meant," Wooyoung protested.

"I know I said before that I wanted to take what I wanted by force, and it's the most horrible thing I've ever said."

"That's not what I meant," Wooyoung repeated, closing the distance between them. "Don't freak out!"

"Clearly I hurt you in about twenty different ways! I'm trying, I thought I was doing okay, I thought it was under control-"

"San!" Wooyoung took his shoulders. "Stop it." He sighed, frustrated with himself and angry with Seonghwa for doing this. San had been so happy and whole when he'd felt like he controlled his own desires, the tiger, but now Seonghwa was risking putting them back on square one with just a few words. "Seonghwa is a drama queen! Can you please, if you have to freak out then do it on your own time!" San blinked a few times, breaking out of his headspace. "I never said no, and I had plenty of opportunities to punch you in the face and leave, which I know because I was tempted more than once. Nobody forces me to do anything. Are you back with me?"

San nodded slowly.

"I'm not afraid of you," Wooyoung reminded him. "Fine, the biking trip kiss was complicated, but I definitely haven't been since then. But you really fucking piss me off." He let go of San and sat on the bed, tired of standing up.

"I wanted to help," San said. "We were down to five minutes, I just acted."

"If I say I don't want your help then don't. You're so controlling!"

San's eyes were flickering, his hands were worrying. "I'm sorry," he said, a little hesitantly like he wasn't sure if he was supposed to apologize or not.

"Provoking me and jerking me around in public, I know you get off on it!"

San shook his head, but even that level of lying bothered him now that they were talking about it. "I'll stop," he said quietly. "I'm sorry, I didn't realize you were this upset." His chin came up. "But I… if I don't… if I just play with you, you act cold and push me away. Fine, I… don't hate being able to turn you on, but it's also…" He made a vaguely apologetic gesture. "It's the only way to make you listen to me. And sometimes the only way to get to talk to you."

"Because you just have some divine right to take my attention whenever you want?" Wooyoung demanded, but already there started losing confidence, despite charging on. "Oh right I forgot, because you're my boyfriend you should have more control over me than I do? It's my body! Don't give me the I can do what I want with what's mine, it's… not that I'm not, but… I mean you… obviously can, I just..."

He was realizing that it wasn't that San could but that Wooyoung wanted him to and if he complained too much then what if San... stopped? Did he have to choose between handing himself over unconditionally, or not getting any tiger pushing at all?

Stunned, San for some reason sat down on the floor. "That's just a… I know you're not literally mine, like a possession, I don't think like that," he said, his expression guarded.

Wooyoung groaned and fell backwards onto his back in the bed. Actually, he was pretty sure that San did think like that, and it was one of the things he censored and hid away.

"You like it, and really, I like it too," he admitted. "I know I provoke you."

Fuck, he was back here again, thinking everything that happened to him was his fault, thinking because he liked something he asked for it. Why was this so hard? He groaned again, more like roared and messed up his own hair in frustration. He liked that San felt this way about him, even if he knew it was problematic. Until now he hadn't had to take a stance, and now that he needed to, he didn't know what he wanted.

Reluctantly, he sat up. San was still sitting on the floor with the same helpless bewilderment on his face. "You like that I'm controlling and push you around, but you hate that I took control of you and pushed you around?" San asked slowly, like he didn't have confidence in his words, which he shouldn't because they were nonsense.

Wooyoung just sat there, now basically giving up on it all because so many words later and he still didn't make any sense. It wasn't even on San, of course San wouldn't get it, he couldn't even explain it to himself. "Forget it," he sighed.

San, who had mostly seemed to want this conversation to end, now suddenly did not want to forget it. He scooted across the floor to sit cross-legged in front of Wooyoung. "Can I try something?" Wooyoung shrugged, why the hell not. "Mingi taught me this, when he came back, it's some kind of therapy thing. Think about the situation, and just tell me how it felt. Not why, or whose fault, or what makes sense - just how it felt right then."

With a deep sigh, Wooyoung chose to play along. "It's so fucking frustrating that I can't... I mean, frustrated. I felt frustrated. And betrayed." He hadn't thought of it that way, but he felt betrayed by his own body, and then everyone else. It was really hard to say that and not try to motivate it or excuse it. "And then you…" San had gone for him without even acknowledging that he was taking something, acting like he was helping, saving him, when Wooyoung had told him repeatedly to leave. "Disrespected," Wooyoung said, cringing a little because it sounded so harsh. He rubbed his lips with the back of his hand, so that he could hide behind it for the final words. "It was humiliating."

"I'm sorry," San said. "I was trying to help, I really was, but I know I fucked up. I never meant to make you feel like that. I'll do better!"

"San-ah…"

"It's just hard sometimes to know when I'm supposed to push and not, but… I'm learning! I'll really do better!"

"San-ah, stop, it's not just your responsibility, I… I don't know... And it's not just you," Wooyoung said. "Everyone treated me like a… problem, like a malfunctioning microphone, talking over my head like I wasn't a person anymore."

"Don't feel that way, of course we-" San stopped himself. "Sorry, that's not right. I don't have any right to tell you how to feel." He frowned at the floor for a moment, arranging his words. "When this happens, there's less and less of a choice the more we run out of time. Eventually… If I think of you like my precious Wooyoungie, I feel like a monster doing something like that to you when I know you have no choice. I have to think of it like a problem I'm solving, or… I become someone I don't want to be."

A few more puzzle pieces fell into place. "I'm sorry," Wooyoung said. "I forced you to say you wanted to do it."

San shrugged. "It is what it is. We do what we have to."

"But you…" Wooyoung could have sworn that, "at the end you looked like you liked it."

San fought with himself some. "Touching you and making you come is…" he rubbed his neck, "It doesn't mean I think it's good or right! But it," he gestured to himself. "Things show on my face."

"Pervert," Wooyoung said, and San's eyes flickered, guilty.

"You want to tell me you don't like when I mess with you?" San countered in self-defense.

"When we were fighting and you weren't around, it was so peaceful," Wooyoung said but felt himself blush so he wasn't sure how well he was selling that. "And really boring," he admitted. They snickered together for a second, in tune, before Wooyoung sighed and stretched. "That's why it's so complicated, all of this," he complained. "I… I do like it, but it also… it feels so hopeless. Everyone's trying so hard for me. I'm not sure you helping me is actually helping, maybe it fixes things in the moment but next time it's the same problem. I don't know what to do."

"It hasn't been that long," San said.

"It feels like an eternity," Wooyoung said. "And you, you split yourself into a bunch of different people, I don't think I can do that, or want to." San seemed fine but it didn't sound like an entirely unproblematic thing.

"It won't be like that, you'll figure out your own way," San insisted, refusing to give up on his optimistic outlook. He climbed into the bed to sit in the middle, legs crossed.

"I was thinking, actually, that it might be easier if I get off before we go," Wooyoung said. "I haven't tried it yet but…"

San grimaced a little, probably thinking that scheduled sex sounded less than exciting. "Hm, I guess I could come help you in the mornings?"

"Isn't the whole point to not make me feel like a problem to be solved, and like you're stuck having sex with me when you don't actually want to."

"I want to," San insisted, stubbornly, like a broken doll on repeat. "Would it help if we think about it some other way? You're using me to take care of a thing for yourself? Like I'm just a tool to make your life easier. I don't mind."

"You're such a fucking superhero," Wooyoung complained. "You probably get off on sweeping in to my rescue, don't you?" San pouted slightly. "I mind! I don't want to use you like a tool, that's literally the problem, I don't want to have sex with someone who doesn't care!"

"I care! I just said, I like getting you off! Think about it in some other way then, whatever works for you. It'd be temporary, you probably just need some time!"

Wooyoung sulked.

San licked his lips, then smiled. The tiny smile grew into a big one, as he failed at holding it down. "Don't get mad," he said. "But for example, we could... it's just a suggestion, don't yell at me! We could think of it like you're doing it for me. That you're pretending to need my help, to... play into my... thing that you said." He watched Wooyoung with big eyes and put his hands behind his own neck, embarrassed and expecting an explosion. When Wooyoung stared back, confused, he said, "The superhero thing."

Wooyoung exploded into a half second of laughter before he slapped a hand over his mouth. With immense effort he managed to straighten his face, although he had to look away from San to do it. "Okay, um, you like what you like," he assured him, "but... you acknowledge that it is... a thing?"

"I'm not an idiot," San said slowly, still suspecting an explosion to be on the way. "You're not the first person to say that to me."

"Um," Wooyoung said, and glanced back, and they both broke down from embarrassed laughter, thankfully because Wooyoung would not have been able to hold back much longer and he didn't want San to feel like he was being made fun of. It was cute and interesting, it was just also funny and Wooyoung laughed when nervous. "So I am right, you do get off on it?"

"I mean, even if I don't get turned on right there and then... You needing me to take charge and rescue you, I… don't mind it. So you don't have to feel bad about it, it can be like roleplay; you're playing damsel in distress so I can come help you. Would that make it better?"

Letting San be the hero both inside and outside the roleplay. Wooyoung snorted, and couldn't help feeling like San was still taking advantage of his problems, but it was also kind of amusing. "This is such a stupid idea," he said. "But I guess we can try it. But it doesn't actually, I mean, it doesn't solve everything, what about when you're not there?"

"But it won't happen when I'm not there. It's my fault in the first place, so I should take responsibility, right?"

"That's cute, but it's happened several times when you weren't there."

"You have to stop thinking about me so much!" San smiled.

"San," Wooyoung said, a little sorry for breaking that smile but also rather annoyed at how smug he was, "what happened yesterday didn't start with you. You made it worse, but it was not you that set it off."

It took San a few seconds to process and accept that. "Then who?" he asked.

"That's private," Wooyoung thought.

"What do you mean private," San pouted. "Were you thinking about something? Or did someone do something?"

"You don't tell me about every guy you look at with Yeosang."

"That's not the same," San said, and Wooyoung rolled his eyes at him because it certainly was. San thought back, trying to remember what other groups had been around. "Was it Felix?" he asked, a hint of tiger sweeping over his eyes.

"No," Wooyoung sighed and hung his head, tired. They'd met Stray Kids a million times at shows, why would it be Felix? "Didn't you make up with Felix at the hangout? It doesn't matter who it was, the point is it wasn't you. Which means it happens without you, and I need to figure out how to deal with it on my own."

"That tall kid was there, who wanted you to kiss his boyfriend."

"Hello, are you listening to me!"

San leaned over and put his arm over Wooyoung's shoulder, nuzzling into the hair at the back of his neck. "Fine, next time I'll go when you tell me to go away," he muttered. "If you tell me who."

"I'm not telling you," Wooyoung laughed.

"Then I'll keep blowing you in storage closets."

"Even if I tell you not to?"

He'd been sure San would back off from that, but San bit his neck gently and whispered, "By force if I have to. To protect Ateez, of course." The arm over Wooyoung's shoulder came up to let San run his fingers over his throat, never holding on, only threatening to.

He wished San's jealousy didn't turn him on so bad. Or maybe he didn't. "My boyfriend will regret you saying that, tiger," he said, as a joke, but as soon as it was over his lips a strange feeling swept over him of wondering who he was talking to.

The hand closed around his throat, pulling him back against San. "Tell me who." Wooyoung's hands automatically came up to pry at the fingers, but San swiped them away.

Curious, wanting to test how this worked, he said, "I'm not telling you, I'll tell my boyfriend, let me talk to him." He wouldn't have noticed if he wasn't paying attention, but San's body tensed and relaxed, he felt it against his back. The grip on his throat softened, and San leaned his forehead against his hair, his breathing somewhat strained.

Wooyoung cast an eye over his shoulder and San leaned around him to let him see him properly. He looked a little wary, as if checking for signs that he'd gone too far. "Too much?" he asked.

"After all this, you're going to threaten me with that?"

"I stop when you want me to stop. I trust you," San said. Trusted him to be strong enough, to tell him if it went too hard. Excitement bubbled through Wooyoung's body, prickling his skin, because San was cautious, but not afraid. There was something else in his eyes. "And you said you like the tiger," San added, and Wooyoung felt like it was a test.

"That didn't feel like the tiger."

If it was a test, he thought San's expression said he'd passed it. "I guess not," San said. "Maybe it's the jealousy monster. Is that okay?"

Wooyoung hesitated, because this part of San was still untested. But San said he was one person, who loved him, and anyway this thing about being different people was just an idea. In reality this was the desires he'd censored away from Wooyoung so far, the stuff he thought made him a bad person. The last target for Wooyoung to challenge. He could forgive San if he went too far, but would San be able to forgive himself?

Ruthless, Wooyoung thought of himself. Always pushing forward, digging deeper, wanting more. "It's nice to meet this friend finally," he said, thinking he sounded arrogant, like someone who thought they could fight a bear because they'd never faced one. The intensity lit up in San's eyes and set off a little explosion of both excitement and fear in Wooyoung's chest. San saw it; he smiled.

"So tell me then," San said. "Who."

Wooyoung smiled back at him. San seemed to have forgotten that he was a person who liked to poke bears. "I don't think so," he said.

"You don't think so? You said you would."

"I changed my mind," Wooyoung stated gleefully and faced forward again. San's hand, still resting against his throat, tensed, scraping nails over sensitive skin. Wooyoung's breath caught a little, it stung. "It's not the first time either, that they got to me," he told San.

San dragged him backwards, and to not get nails digging into his throat more Wooyoung scrambled to follow, getting his legs up on the bed and pushing himself after San. He was released, only to have San grab his hair instead, pulling him close to say, against his lips, "Is that why you were watching videos with Mingi? You found a girl you like?"

The grip in his hair was so hard that Wooyoung didn't manage to answer, instead letting out a gasp of pain. San let go, and he rubbed his head while San walked off to the wardrobe. They'd all gotten silk bathrobes doing a promotion long ago, and Wooyoung watched San pull out the waistband of his. Not in any hurry, he wrapped both ends around his hands and tested the strength, then came casually walking back.

"Would it bother you?" Wooyoung asked him, staying where he was and letting San slide in behind him on the bed. "If it's a girl?"

"A girl," he said in Wooyoung's ear. "Why would I care about that? Give me your hands."

Wooyoung hated the way he spoke, giving commands as if Wooyoung should be happy for getting them. He turned to look at San, and San gave him a tiny crooked grin. He knew Wooyoung hated it, he did it on purpose. "Make me."

"No," San chuckled. "I don't have to. Put your hands behind you."

"Fuck you." San blinked at that, but recovered instantly to that annoying smugness. Wooyoung glared at him but he just waited, his only movement his fingers feeling the silk in his hands. Wooyoung could just leave, San wasn't going to keep him here against his will. He turned his head to look towards the door, and grimaced at himself. As if. But staying meant facing the truth that San was right, he wanted to follow his orders, would ask for it. It left a hint of bad taste in his mouth, a whiff of old disgust, but this was San, San already knew and didn't judge him, liked him even more for it.

Steeling himself, he put both hands behind him. As San silently, meticulously slid the silk over Wooyoung's skin, making sure he was properly trapped, Wooyoung felt a sort of freedom. He'd crossed the line, he didn't have to hold back or pretend he didn't like things. Once San was done there was no way Wooyoung was getting out of this, the restraints or the challenge.

"What would you even do with a girl," San said, coming around to straddle his lap and dig his hands into his hair. Wooyoung braced for getting his hair pulled again but San just kept running his hands through it, watching his reactions. "When you like being manhandled like this? When you love my hand crushing down on your neck? What girl would be able to do this to you better than I can?" The moment Wooyoung relaxed, San grabbed and pulled, yanking his head back, and dove in to kiss him. Wooyoung moaned into his lips, trying to twist his head free.

"Do you have to pull so fucking hard!" he snapped, panting, when San let go of him. He could talk back all he wanted it seemed, San wouldn't get discouraged, and it felt even more liberating to not have to worry about scaring him off.

San took his jaw and ground his hips against him. "Seems to me you like it," he smiled. "And even if you don't, what are you going to do about it?"

"I don't like it," Wooyoung claimed bravely, although San was sitting on the evidence otherwise.

"Then tell me who it is," San said. "That's the only thing you need to do to make me stop."

"Never," Wooyoung told him.

San leaned in to kiss his neck, and let his teeth catch now and then while he kept grinding against him. Wooyoung panted, trying to move his legs to get a better angle, San's slow grinding was driving him crazy, he needed more. In response San latched on to his neck and sucked hard, so hard it hurt.

"You can't leave marks!" Wooyoung protested. "San! Ah!" He struggled to get San off, and fell back bringing San with him. San sat up licking his lips, smiling. "You can't-" Wooyoung was interrupted by San unbuttoning his pants and yanking them out of the way. A hand crept down between his legs and he was so worked up now, he needed it.

San slid down his body and Wooyoung shivered when the heat of his breath hit him. Humming with anticipation, San licked him into his mouth. Wooyoung struggled against the restraints on his hands, wanting so badly to run his fingers through San's hair, he was about to come and San just kept going, pushing him like he had a deadline to catch. With a gasp and a shudder he came while San licked it up like a cat.

It didn't take long for him to understand why San had let him come so fast. San kept stroking him, slowing a little but purposefully careless, teeth gently nipping at his most sensitive skin, and pleasure shifted into suffering. Without the pain resistance from imminent orgasm, the little nips were sharp, making him tense up in anticipation. More than the pain itself, the tension and sensitivity was unbearable, he tried to get his legs up to kick San away but San wrestled him down with ease. "Please," he begged. "Stop. Ah, please, stop!"

San raised his head and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. "Did you say something?"

Wooyoung just breathed for a second, relieved, and San leaned down again. "No, no, no," Wooyoung begged, "wait, wait!"

San climbed up to straddle him again, grabbed the neck of his shirt and pulled him up to him. He'd been smiling a lot, but he wasn't smiling now. "No?" he checked.

"I'm okay, just give me a second," Wooyoung panted.

"I'm not giving you anything," San said calmly. "Is it a no or is it not?"

Wooyoung struggled with himself for a moment, mind swimming with his wants and fears screaming in discord at the dark promise in San's eyes. San wasn't anywhere near done with him, and he wanted San's pleasure so bad, he hadn't gotten to do anything, San was still fully dressed. "I'm fine," he decided.

San's serious expression cracked into a grin before he attacked Wooyoung's lips, kissing him like he really wanted to consume him. He bit so hard Wooyoung moaned, tasting iron, and held on to Wooyoung's ribcage, fingers digging deep into his flesh.

"I know it's not a girl," San whispered against his lips. "You like this too much. Pushing your limits, pushing mine. You want someone you can fight, and tease, and provoke in public, knowing you'll get it all back once it's just us. You want the high stakes, and the tickle in your gut, wondering how much control I have left and what you have coming."

"Fuck you," Wooyoung whispered back.

San smiled wide. "Yeah, just like that. So who is he? A big name? One of the actors that were there today?"

"It's a kid," Wooyoung gave him.

"Jongho's age? Or younger?"

Wooyoung licked his lips. "Younger."

San had grabbed his t-shirt neck again, and twisted it slowly around his fingers, tightening it like a noose. "I thought you had a thing for older guys."

"Not for what I had in mind," Wooyoung said, daring to lift one corner of his mouth.

San kissed that corner of his mouth with unexpected softness, then continued to plant kisses along his jaw and down his neck. His hands swept over his skin, holding on only to steady Wooyoung so he wouldn't fall over. Sensing a slight reaction, he tentatively ground his hips again. "Already? I don't think you've ever come back that fast," he teased. "You're so eager today, baby."

His touch was uncomfortable but drawing out some deep echo of pleasure, and Wooyoung's body helpfully got working on urging it up to the surface. He wished he wasn't so damned easy, because he was still not getting anything from San beyond the kisses. He could tell San enjoyed torturing him, but San hadn't made the slightest move to deal with himself.

"San," he said, swallowing because his voice sounded a little raw. "Let me help you."

"With what? I'm not sure what you can do, tied up like that." San chuckled, his roaming hands found a nipple and flicked it.

"Help with you," Wooyoung said. He licked his lips suggestively, trying to tempt San into letting him get him off.

San twisted this time, and Wooyoung winced and heard himself whine. "Mmm, no thank you," San purred. "I'm fine." He leaned down and planted a nice little kiss, before biting him.

"Ah!" Wooyoung twisted away, and he probably shouldn't be surprised but he was. San smiled happily at him, set a hand against his chest and pushed him down on his back again. Back to his steady grinding, he licked his teeth in an obvious threat.

"This was the problem yesterday. Pain makes you make the sexiest faces. I punched you and," he chewed on his lip briefly, reliving the memory, "it turned me on, your expression and how easily Yunho held you in place. I thought, I could do whatever I wanted to you if Yunho pinned you down like this, you wouldn't be able to do anything about it. I was nearly in as much trouble as you for a moment." His hands closed around Wooyoung's throat, taking a bit of the weight as he kept fucking against him, the fabric of his pants providing uncomfortable, maddening friction. "I felt sorry for thinking that way, then," San said, watching his reactions closely. "But the truth is it makes me want to hurt you. And we both know I have no reason to be sorry."

San's confession sent electric thrills through him, chasing his need higher. Hearing his boyfriend admit the things he'd already known San was thinking, was a victory in itself. The grip on his throat didn't stop Wooyoung from breathing, but it did make it more difficult, slowing him down and forcing hyper-awareness of himself. Wooyoung's hands were being crushed under his back, and his body was building up to another climax although he didn't want to. San's thrusting was making him sore, it would get worse after this time and he had no doubt San was planning to exploit that too.

He didn't want to, but he also needed to come so horribly much just to ease the soreness for a moment. San purposefully kept him on the edge as long as he could, putting a hand over his mouth to put a stop to his begging and smiled at the desperate whining that came instead. Eventually Wooyoung came apart from one single hard thrust against him, and felt like his mind was falling, endlessly. The second orgasm was weaker, more like relief, but the tiredness and sensitivity gave it a sharp edge. He writhed under San, begging him to stop but too spent to make a real effort.

"All you have to do is tell me who it is," San said softly, nibbling at his ear. "I can do this all night." Recognizing that Wooyoung was still being stubborn, he said, "What did you mean with for what you had in mind? What are you using this kid for?" Wooyoung's suffering expression turned him on again, he had to force himself to let up to allow him enough space to answer.

Wooyoung rolled over on his side, trying to get away from San's touch entirely, needing space to gather himself. Whether intentionally or not, San allowed it. Wooyoung's hair was damp with sweat and clinging to his forehead, and since he couldn't use his hands he tried to rub it away against the bed but just messed it up more. With some effort he managed to sit up, and turned around to find San stretched out comfortably, watching. Realizing how he must have looked, sweaty and messy, rubbing his head against the bed like a dog, Wooyoung froze and blushed.

For some reason his mind got stuck on the fact that San had taken off his socks at some point. He tried to wrench his eyes away from it, but his mind was supplying insistent questions about how it would feel to get San's foot on his neck. San was still in the business-casual slacks and sweater he'd worn outside, and looked so infuriatingly unbothered.

"Tell me," San said again, with the most honeyed voice.

"It's my fanboy. The first time we met, his friends pretty much tried to hand him over gift wrapped." He shook his head trying to get the hair out of his face that way, but it was too stuck to his skin.

"You'd like that?" San asked, pushing himself off the bed to brush the strands of hair out of his eyes for him. "Some cute kid who bows and scrapes, eager to please?"

"Who wouldn't?"

"That's what you like with older guys too, normally, isn't it? Them doting and spoiling you, showering you with praise."

Wooyoung just smiled at him, not quite as willing to admit to that.

"If you want to be adored," San said, smiling with deceptive sweetness, "then why does it turn you on so bad to be picked on and ordered around and hurt?"

"It doesn't," Wooyoung lied, defiantly meeting his eyes.

San slapped him. Not hard, not even as hard as several of the guys had done to him on camera, but Wooyoung hadn't expected it and jerked away instinctively. His hair fell into his eyes again, he stared at San through it, adrenaline burning through his body. When San reached for him he tried to bite his hand. San's eyes flashed, happy to accept the challenge, he raised his hand again and Wooyoung flinched. The blow never came, but San's little smile enjoying his reaction was almost more aggravating than being hit.

He shoved Wooyoung's legs down the side of the bed, grabbed his shirt and half lifted, half dragged him off. For a breathless second Wooyoung thought he would fall off the bed head first, without being able to catch himself, and cried out in fear, but San switched grip on his shirt and broke the fall. Wooyoung got placed on his knees, back to the bed. San didn't take his pants off, didn't even pull them down, just opened his fly and dug himself out and said, "Bite this and you'll regret it."

Wooyoung wanted it too much to resist. San pushing in between his lips always made him forget everything else, like everything that mattered was right in front of him. Then he was hit by a streak of rebelliousness, and perhaps curiosity of what San would do, and let his teeth catch just a little. San slapped him again, no hesitation, harder than the first time. A twitch of his lip was all that escaped of the snarl he pushed down, the satisfaction of hitting Wooyoung when he couldn't fight back.

The same surge went through Wooyoung, a rush of electrifying energy that he couldn't do anything with, that just burned out in his veins like acid yet made him part his knees on the floor. He flexed his hands behind his back to test the restraints but the silk and San's knots were merciless. Worse yet was how much his lips missed San, how badly he wanted back, how difficult that was to accept about himself. He panted, waiting because it was the only thing he could do, desire burning too bright for the shame that lurked in the shadows. San grabbed a handful of his hair to hold him in place and pushed in again. Wooyoung wanted to bite him, wanted to see that little snarl of getting off on punishing him but full scale, but he wasn't willing to give up this; San's silky skin against his tongue and the tugs on his hair, the experience of his body giving the man he loved pleasure.

San was simply enjoying himself, not trying to get anywhere. Wooyoung wanted to get him off, but if San didn't want to he wouldn't be able to. The stamina and control had never been as frustrating as now. Thinking if there was some way to get around it, Wooyoung lost concentration and choked, had to withdraw coughing. A hand with open palm came up and he winced, but San petted his hair as if in apology for going too hard on him. "Good boy."

Wooyoung shook his hand off. "I'm not a fucking dog!"

"Why, didn't you like praise?" San teased, tucked himself in and squatted down in front of him, smiling. Fuck him for stopping too, Wooyoung wasn't done with that.

There was a knock on the door. "Go away," San told them without looking.

"Are you watching porn or is Wooyoung in there with you?" Yunho asked. When he got no answer, he continued, "I'm going to need some of my stuff if I'm sleeping out here."

"What stuff?" San asked, looking around.

"Just let me in for a second."

San tore down the cover from the bed and made sure it hid Wooyoung completely. Peeking out, Wooyoung saw him go over to the door and unlock it. Yunho came inside, carefully glancing around and spotting the rather obvious human-shaped bundle on the floor "That better be Wooyoung," he told San.

"Just get your stuff."

Yunho picked up some clothes and his phone charger. On the way out he suddenly lunged in Wooyoung's direction, and San threw himself in between, grabbing Yunho's shirt, tense and serious. Yunho laughed at him, chortling with amusement. San cursed at him, steered him out of the room hands on, and locked the door again.

Wooyoung sat up, shaking the covers off him. "You could just have untied me," he suggested innocently.

"We are not done," San told him. "You still haven't told me who it is."

"I won't."

San smiled. "We'll see about that."

Sitting here on the floor with San standing in front of him, Wooyoung's eyes got stuck on his naked feet again. If not on his neck maybe… between his legs?

"What? Baby. Eyes up." Wooyoung reluctantly raised his gaze. "Like what you like," San reminded him. "What?"

Wooyoung couldn't possibly say this. No way. Although he'd said worse things. No, he wasn't going to say it, it only mattered if San wanted to do it. Fuck. "Step on me," he mumbled, and it came out way smaller than he'd meant as his confidence fizzled instantly.

Since he was bravely looking into San's eyes he saw the desire flare and San's eyes glaze over, saw his control flicker like a candle in the wind. San stuck his hands in his pockets and set his foot on Wooyoung's shoulder, taekwondo balance becoming useful as he slowly pushed Wooyoung's head down. Wooyoung shivered feeling the hard pressure on his neck, it was very different from a hand or an arm. His cheek touched the floor and he got a little more weight trapping him there and found that he was… trapped. He could have dodged before, but from this position he couldn't wiggle loose.

He had limited vision, mostly just San's other leg, but San bent down to look at him closer and Wooyoung saw his hands, still arrogantly in his pockets, like this was nothing to him. "Happy?" San taunted.

Wooyoung was, in fact, very happy and his pressure had built up from sucking San, now it was getting urgent. He moaned, rather pathetically, and the explosion of humiliation in his gut made him burn and ache. He hadn't felt so much like San's as he did here, on the floor, seeing in the corner of his eye the insufferable smirk on San's lips and San's eyes brimming with lust and power.

"What was that?"

"Please, I need to come again," Wooyoung begged.

The weight on his neck lifted, San took a step back. "Get on the bed," he commanded.

Wooyoung looked at the bed and wasn't sure his legs would carry, he was exhausted and he'd been on his knees for a while now. His fucking hands still in his fucking pockets, San waited, as if saying, I won't touch you until you obey. Growling with effort, Wooyoung made a brave attempt but failed.

"Can't even do a small thing for me. You want to suck me, you want my heel on your neck, you want to come, but when I ask you for something…"

"San," Wooyoung moaned, making a second attempt but his knees were so fucked. He fell on his back instead, thinking if he at least stretched out his legs for a second maybe he'd be able to. "I can do it, I'll do it!"

"Too late." The hands finally lifted, San came, yanked him up and heaved him onto the bed, not caring what he grabbed or how he fell. More than the roughness, Wooyoung whined in protest because San was stealing his chance to prove that he would do things for him, that he wasn't selfish and greedy.

"I could have-"

"Shut up."

The third time took longer. Wooyoung was exhausted, and although his body definitely wanted to get back in the game the hair trigger had been worn down. He would have loved to enjoy being able to take his time, but San's hands felt like lava against his skin, pleasure and suffering mixed together as pure intensity, inseparable into good or bad, inescapable. San flipped him over on his stomach and pushed him up on his knees, leaning over him to touch him and kiss his way up his back. He didn't complain when San pushed a finger inside him, riding too high to even feel if it hurt. Then, while he was whimpering with coming again, his body too tired for it to feel like much of a relief, San added another finger.

Coming down however, it definitely hurt. "Fuck, stop, I can't," Wooyoung whined. "San-ah!" He winced, embarrassed by the helpless tone of his own voice. Since he couldn't move his hands his weight was on his shoulder, his neck twisted uncomfortably.

San leaned over him, breathing hard in his ear. "You're so fucking sexy." He held Wooyoung in place, not allowing him to squirm away. "How far do you dare to push me, Wooyoung-ah. Tell me who it is. I won't stop."

Wooyoung squirmed around San's fingers, whimpering. What could San possibly do to him beyond this? His mind was swimming, overwhelmed and exhausted, and when San sped up it was too much. "Stop," he breathed. San leaned around him to look at him, and their eyes met. "Not so hard," he begged. San maybe felt a little sorry for him because his hand stilled and Wooyoung realized he didn't want him to. Even though it had felt unbearable, the moment it stopped his body ached in protest. He wanted San to like it too, was San really not going to let him get him off? Did he need to earn it? "Let me, let me do it myself," he asked, and he hadn't thought he had the strength but his hips moved on their own, fucking himself slowly on San's hand. "San-ah, let me," he panted, "let me get you off." Wooyoung shuddered, hearing his zipper.

San pulled him back into position, leaned over him and bit his shoulder so hard he cried out and tried to writhe away. He grabbed Wooyoung's hips and Wooyoung's mind snapped to attention realizing what he was about to do. "No, wait!" he said, and tried with all his strength to push up from San's weight but failed, San still ready at his open entrance. "Wait! Not like this! No! I don't want it to be like this, not our first time!" Folded up, he had no momentum and was too tired, trying to wiggle away from San just made him panic because he couldn't physically stop him. "Please, no, no!" With a groan, San left him. Wooyoung fell onto his side to look for him.

Standing beside the bed, San had tipped his head all the way back and was staring up at the ceiling with his hands on his hips, taking deep breaths. Gathering himself he came towards Wooyoung with purpose, and Wooyoung inched away from him in fear but didn't get very far. San yanked on the silk restraints and they fell apart just like that, running like liquid down Wooyoung's hands.

Wooyoung sat up on his knees. Everything from his shoulders to his fingertips hurt, having been fixed in place for too long. Gasping with the effort he managed to lift his hands and rub his shoulders. He was too focused on getting life back in his limbs to notice at first, but once he'd gotten over the initial stiffness he realized San had started getting himself off.

"San-ah," he said, a groan of pain escaping him as he crawled to the edge of the bed and reached for San with still aching arms. San hesitated, surprised. Wooyoung took his hip and pulled him in to put one knee on the bed, and slid his lips down over him shuddering with satisfaction and exhaustion both. San was already close, like the dams had opened once he'd stopped holding back. Wooyoung backed up and just worked him hard with his hands, grimacing with pain and effort, intentionally provoking the pain because San had said he liked seeing it.

"Ah, baby, you're so fucking good," San breathed, stroking his hair, trying to not grab on. "You make me go crazy. I can't help myself."

Wooyoung lapped up the praise but stayed focused. Each ripple of pleasure running through San's body felt like it was his own, his gasps harmonizing with San's. He loved the way San was watching him, like he was the center of the universe.

"Tell me you're mine," San commanded.

"I'm yours," Wooyoung said before he knew it himself, conditioned to follow San's orders. But it wasn't good enough. San took his chin to force him to look up and meet his eyes. Suddenly it was harder to say. San asked for so much, wasn't satisfied with owning his body, his heart or even his mind, he wanted to possess all of him, down to his soul, down to every breath. It was more frightening than anything else they'd done today. "I'm yours," Wooyoung promised him, in the end unable to deny him, he might as well try to hold down the wind.

Breathlessly, like he didn't even manage to make a sound, San closed his eyes and came in his hands. Wooyoung whined, wanting to suck it up and make it feel even better for him, but San was still holding his jaw.

San wiped sweat from his forehead and tipped onto his back into bed. Wooyoung unceremoniously wiped his hands on the sheets and sat back to catch his breath for a second. Then he climbed out of bed and found his underwear.

"Fuck," San breathed. "Where are you going?" he asked, sitting up.

"I need water," Wooyoung told him. "I'll be back in a second."

"Wait," San said, but Wooyoung was already gone.

He stumbled to the kitchen, got some water and leaned on both his hands on the kitchen counter, eyes closed. His mind was still processing what had just gone down, memory flashes passing by like scattered frames from a movie. He and San were crazy, but this was a lot. If he looked at San he'd want to reassure him, so he needed a moment to collect himself.

He didn't regret anything, some memories still sent faint echoes of butterflies through him, but... San would really have gone all the way, had wanted to fuck him into submission. Probably would have done it straight through his first no, had been so worked up and so turned on he'd had to force himself to listen. It didn't scare him, but was maybe a reminder that the bear Wooyoung enjoyed poking so much was actually a bear; it had instincts.

"Hey," Yunho said, coming into the kitchen.

"Ah! Fuck!" Wooyoung stumbled a step to the side, feeling like his heart had almost jumped out of his chest, having completely forgotten six other people lived here. He looked out into the living room but no one else was around. "Sorry," he told Yunho. "You scared me."

"I'm terrifying," Yunho agreed, hair fluffy, in his checkered pale orange pajamas. "That was you, in San's room, right? Or do I need to have a real talk with him?"

Wooyoung smiled, thankful for the lightening of the mood. He moved to pass Yunho and go back to San, and Yunho held an arm in front of him to stop him.

"Wooyoung," Yunho said softly, eyes scanning over him, a rare seriousness on his face.

"What?" Wooyoung asked when he didn't continue.

Yunho thought for a second. "Come with me," he told him and ushered him out of the kitchen, not touching.

"What?" Wooyoung repeated. "Where are we going?"

To the bathroom apparently. Yunho flicked on the light, closed the door behind them and placed Wooyoung in front of the mirror. Wooyoung paused, staring at himself. His hair was a mess of course, but beyond that… there was barely a patch of skin that wasn't red or darkening. He reached up to touch the little blotches on his neck, and realized his wrists were flaming. The silk was gentle, but had still dug in for a long time. Beyond that, San tossing him around and biting him had agitated the skin of most of his torso, and his shoulder definitely had a bite mark. "Shit am I bleeding?" he said to himself and touched his lip. A hint of blood on his finger. He'd thought he'd tasted iron because it hurt, not that San had actually broken the skin.

Yunho stood leaned against the wall by the door, arms crossed, watching him.

He'd need an actual makeup artist to cover the love bites, and the ones on his wrists he wasn't sure what to do with. They didn't look like bruises, maybe they'd go away? "I know," he told Yunho. "We can't do this again. We went too hard, we fucked up. "

Yunho didn't say anything.

"I'm okay," he said, worried Yunho was judging San. "I played too. I wanted…" His expression in the mirror was shifting, he watched his chest rise and fall. Put your hands behind you. Get on the bed. Without San there, his familiar presence and scent, he only remembered the look in his eyes and that bad taste at the back of his throat. Trying to somehow make himself feel better, or reassure Yunho, or something, he smiled and winced as the barely closed wound on his lip opened. His finger came back with more blood this time. He pressed the back of his hand to it and glared at Yunho, knowing the game was up.

"Do you want me to go back with you?" Yunho asked.

Wooyoung snorted. "I can take care of myself." Then instantly changed his mind. "What am I supposed to say to San, he'll freak out, he didn't mean to... not like this."

"I can freak out," Yunho suggested. "Tell him that you've both put Ateez at risk and you're never doing this again. And you don't have to say anything."

A truth hidden inside another truth, was that any better than a lie? Wooyoung checked that he'd stopped bleeding. "We have a system," he told Yunho, shaking his head. "I should tell him myself."

"Want backup?" Yunho asked.

Wooyoung smiled at him very carefully, to not start bleeding again. "Thank you, but I'm okay." He walked up to pat his arm.

Yunho held up his hands and backed away. "Ah ah, no touching! You have not showered!"

Wooyoung had to slap his hand over his mouth to hold his lip safely in place because he started laughing.

"I won't tell anyone," Yunho told him. "But…"

Wooyoung nodded and gave him a thumbs up. Yunho let him out of the bathroom and he walked quickly, hoping nobody else would come out of their rooms the seconds it took him to cross the living room.

Back inside the room, San had undressed down to underwear and was in the process of putting the silk band back on his robe. Wooyoung locked the door behind him, thinking San had gone straight for that band like he'd been waiting to use it. The room was too dusky, San couldn't see all the marks he'd left and that was probably why he hadn't reacted to it in the process.

"Did you bring water?" San asked.

"Sorry," Wooyoung said.

San hung the robe back in the wardrobe and closed it. "Why are you standing over there?"

"We need to talk," Wooyoung said, as much as he wished they didn't.

"Um, yeah, I guess we should. Was there, um, anything I shouldn't do again?" He asked, following their previously established pattern, hands coming up to worry a little.

Wooyoung sighed and smiled and ran his hand through his hair. With San in front of him the scariness in his memory seemed overblown and the bad feeling like a temporary hallucination. "You know," he said, "we have no reason to hold back anymore. I said no and even this part of you listened."

San spoke a little carefully. "Did you not think I would?"

"Well, it was the first time I met this friend."

"We defeated this friend at the party. The monster lost all its teeth."

"This is without teeth?" Wooyoung said with overt disbelief.

San paused. It was too dark and he was too far away for Wooyoung to see his face well. "Wooyoung-ah," he said, "baby, are you okay? Talk to me."

Wooyoung tried, he honestly did but the words were stuck in his throat so he simply flicked on the lights. He saw San's casual happiness run off his face, saw his eyes discover the rose mosaic and how he struggled to reconcile what he saw with the memory of what they'd done. Like Wooyoung, he'd not realized, caught up in the moment.

"Did anyone see you out there?" San asked, Ateez the first thing on his mind.

"Yunho. He promised to not tell anyone."

"If it had to be someone…" San said, which Wooyoung agreed with. Most of them would be painfully awkward, Hongjoong would yell their ears off about the marks, but Seonghwa... San's relationship with Seonghwa might never be the same. San came over and took Wooyoung's hand to look closer at his wrist. "I guess the monster isn't as toothless as I thought," he considered, running his finger over the abused skin. "Does it hurt?"

"No," Wooyoung answered. "My lip hurts a little, but it's fine. Is my back also…?" He turned around to let San look. San touched the back of his neck.

"Just a little irritated, it'll all probably be gone tomorrow," San said, running his hands over it.

Wooyoung put his arms around San's neck. "San-ah."

"I guess it was the first and last show for that friend."

Wooyoung had expected San to reach that conclusion by himself, they were both equally devoted to Ateez and this was just not going to work. But even if it seemed distant and unimportant now here with San, he had to tell him how he felt. If the words would like to come out of his mouth. "I don't think…" he said and faltered.

Frustrated with himself, Wooyoung ran his hand through his hair, turned the light back off and wandered over to sit on the bed. So much had happened and he'd been out of his mind for half of it, he most likely didn't remember everything. San being so straightforward and smiling about hurting him had been a little creepy but also pretty hot, and he'd not done anything to break the trust, had listened when Wooyoung needed him to. Pain wasn't something he actively sought but just the fact that San was comfortable inflicting it felt amazing, and… he didn't exactly have any complaints for any other reason either. So it should be fine. But…

"There's something wrong," San said, noticing his expression. He came over to sit next to him.

"I, it feels kind of weird when you… give orders like that, like give me your hands . I mean telling me what to do is fine but you… It's… it just sounded too similar to, take off your shirt, you know? I can't really explain what the difference is..."

San's eyes widened, "I'm sorry," he said, and looked like the sky had fallen on his head.

He didn't want to say it because he didn't want to hurt San, didn't want him to go back to being afraid of himself and apologizing for everything and treating Wooyoung like he was made of glass. "Don't make me have to reassure you!" Wooyoung he told him, raising his voice. "It's fucked up that you do something that upsets me and then I have to reassure you!"

"I don't need to be reassured," San stated, insulted. "Baby, what…"

"Why can't we have a conversation without you freaking out and looking like the world is falling on your head and-"

"Jung Wooyoung!" San snapped. "Who's freaking out right now?"

Wooyoung shut up to take a deep breath.

"You asked me to trust that you're strong enough for my shit," San told him. "Will you trust me the same way? I react to things, it shows on my face, it doesn't mean I can't handle it! I look sad for two seconds and you're turning yourself inside out!"

Why did San have to be so annoying and condescending and so… right?

"Don't cry," San said and hugged him.

"I'm not crying!" Wooyoung protested. "Ah, shit." He squirmed out of the hug and touched his lip. Fucking bleeding again, could he not.

San kissed him.

"Ew!" Wooyoung protested into the kiss. "I'm bleeding! Ew, stop!"

San smiled, proud of himself, and licked his lips.

"Ew!" Wooyoung laughed and pushed at him.

"You told me before," San said and sighed a tiny little sigh. "That you didn't like orders like that, and I forgot, that's why I'm sorry. I'll remember this time."

The mood had lightened, and San was right. San had grown so much in just this short time. And Wooyoung knew he wasn't that deer eyed innocent kid anymore, he didn't need to protect him.

"It wasn't just that," he admitted. "Even if it wasn't for Ateez I don't think this is how I want things to be… I had fun! A lot of it was, great, actually, but I don't think I'd want it to be like this all the time. A lot of it felt different from the tiger, you know? Colder? Or something?" He gave up on that and turned to face San properly, so he could see if San was thinking the wrong things. "I don't want you to be afraid of letting go, or feeling like you can't tell me what you want, or-"

San smiled, then laughed like something was really funny.

"I'm serious," Wooyoung told him, shocked.

"Honestly," San said, "when you left, I sat here and thought, what the fuck do I do if this is how you want it to be now? It felt good but… it's not about what I did exactly, but how I did it. It feels like I didn't do it right. And these marks… I hate it. I hate that I did this to you. The monster is there," he tapped his own chest, "but it's not what I really want. It's like if I would eat everything that looks tasty. It might feel good in the moment but it's not what I want." Wooyoung hadn't thought of it that way. Getting San to completely let go of control might not be the brilliant plan he'd once thought. San laughed again, at himself. "I felt like a coward for using Ateez as an excuse. And then you… just say what you feel. You're always so brave."

In fact, Wooyoung thought, habitually deflecting the compliment, in fact one of the things he and San did for each other was help overcome the temptations of the moment to achieve the goals they aimed for. Maybe he shouldn't provoke so hard, but listen to what San wanted. The tiger was one thing, but the monster, as San called it, didn't seem to be who San wanted to be. "You hate it?" he asked, but only because he didn't know what to say.

"I mean, I like what we did, or most of it. But I hate to see you hurt like this, I love you. It's disrespectful, your job is important to you and I'm messing with it," San explained. "And it's so pointless, because, I am so happy to even get to kiss you. You don't know how much…" San took his hands. "Everything you do, everything you let me do, every kiss, every time you say you're mine, it feels like I'm dreaming!" San was drowning again, threatening to sweep Wooyoung away out into the ocean and drag them both under the surface. He drew for breath and the love in his eyes was shifting as it overwhelmed him.

Like being oversensitive, Wooyoung thought. Instead of being sensitive to getting turned on, San's heart was sensitive. One kiss or one look was enough for his emotions to overflow, making him struggle for control, and it frightened him as much as Wooyoung was afraid of his own loss of control, maybe more. But he knew how to help San.

"San-ah," he said smiling mischievously. "Did you tell the truth before? Do you really get turned on by what I look like when I'm in pain?"

"Ah fuck," San said, and did not disappoint him, grimacing and looking away. "Not always, not most of the time. It's only some… things."

"When you're the one causing it?" Wooyoung suggested.

"No, no. You make this kind of… snarl," San said, and suddenly smiled like the monster peeked through and was imagining it on his face. "Have you seen those videos of cats being chased by like, a bear, and then suddenly the cat snaps around, like, fuck this, and scratches the bear on the nose and the bear runs away? It feels like that. Like you toss the pain aside, fuck this, it can't stop you. It's sexy."

In the end he saved San from his emotions, got to see San squirm, and got a pretty neat compliment. He smiled with pride of what an excellent boyfriend he was. Attracted by that smile San scooted closer and put an arm around his shoulders, putting them with their backs to the wall side by side. Wooyoung took his hand on his shoulder and tried to bite it.

"Why!" San exclaimed, struggling to get away.

Wooyoung laughed. No reason, he was embarrassed and didn't know what to say.

"I want to say something," San said. "Don't bite me! I don't know if you want to hear about it, but I'm going to say it anyway. I don't think I should use it as a threat. Going all the way. You said you didn't want our first time to be like this, and you're right. I wouldn't want it to. It should be-"

"Don't start with all the special occasion and rose petals and mood candles," Wooyoung warned him.

San gave him an annoyed look. "I'm sorry my devotion to you is too sappy for you to bear," he told him, moderately serious. "All I want to say is that I don't want it to happen unless you want it, and I don't want you to feel pressured. So mock me all you like but I'm not going to use it as a threat, anymore."

"Fine, you sappy wimp," Wooyoung told him, and laughed happily at San's briefly injured look because they both knew Wooyoung was shy and embarrassed by the overt declarations but loved how romantic San was.

San took Wooyoung's hand and kissed the mark on his wrist. Smiling softly to himself, he did the same with Wooyoung's other hand, and then leaned in and kissed the mark on his neck.

"Sorry, but there is no way I can do it again," Wooyoung said.

"I'm not trying to start anything," San told him, like he was being silly. "I just love you." He gently took Wooyoung's face sweeping his thumb over his cheek and kissed his lips, soft and sweet. Wooyoung nudged his nose with his own until he kissed him properly, deeply, breathing in his scent, wrapping his arms around him and hugging him tight.

"I love you," Wooyoung said. San smiled his sunshine smile, irresistible; it was impossible for Wooyoung to not smile back. Seconds passed. "Say it back!"

"I already said it," San protested, startled at the volume of his voice.

"No you didn't!"

San stared at him like he had no idea what to do with him. "Yes I did."

"You don't love me?"

"Wooyoung," San said, somewhere between amused and tired of him, "this is some ploy to make me say it more times than you, isn't it."

"What are you talking about!" Wooyoung wailed. "You won't say it back! Please?"

San sighed and leaned in closer, Wooyoung trying to look cute, waiting expectantly. Just as he was about to open his mouth, San changed his mind, swallowed a smile, and kissed Wooyoung's temple. "Sleep well." Then turned away to get in under the covers.

Wooyoung blew air through his nose. "We need to change sheets," he muttered at him, but he wasn't getting up to do it and San seemed settled in so they were sleeping on them, apparently. Grumpy, he got in next to San. San tried to cuddle up and he pushed him away, which made San laugh.

"Really? Okay." He rolled over and turned his back.

"San. San-ah!" Wooyoung grabbed his shoulder and pulled him back onto his back.

"Yes, baby?" San said sweetly, clearly trying not to laugh at him, and Wooyoung had enough of this. He tried to bite San's arm, and they struggled for a bit, until San said, "Okay!" and Wooyoung stopped to stare at him, waiting. "I'll say it if you tell me who the kid is."

This again? "Why do you care?" Wooyoung asked.

"Do you want me to say it or not?"

"Not," Wooyoung decided.

"Really?" San asked. "You've already told me so much, why does it matter, it's not like I'll hunt him down and kill him." Wooyoung stared at him. "What? I said I won't!"

"Why would you even think of that!" Wooyoung exclaimed.

"Maybe I want to thank him," San suggested. "For being your fan and making you so happy."

Wooyoung thought that was even less likely than the hunting down and killing scenario, which he didn't really like thinking about, so he switched subject. "San-ah. Because of that kid, though, I was thinking about it. The thing we talked about. If I want to… um, to top you."

"Okay?" San said, fussing to get the sheets in order after their struggle.

"I want to try it, and it's not like there's anyone else, so it has to be you, even if it's still kind of hard to imagine."

San looked surprised. "It is?"

Wooyoung held up his arms to show the marks on his wrists.

"Yeah but that's not really my normal self. I'm cute!"

"You're super cute," Wooyoung agreed. "And still somehow… Yunho told me you're an obvious top, I think all of them think so. But it's okay with you? You're still up for it?"

"Well… okay, I guess… Rather than you running off cheating on me..." Wooyoung spun around and sat up. "I'm joking," San snickered, pulling him back down. "Calm down. I said it was fine and it is. Whenever you want to."

So Wooyoung just had to figure out how. "I love you," he tried.

"I lo-" San stopped himself, remembering, and smiled.

"Whaaa!" Wooyoung threw himself over him, grabbed his throat and shook him. San laughed and only nominally fought back, making sad noises when he put his knees in uncomfortable places. "Say it," Wooyoung threatened. He didn't do violence, but he was this close right now to taking his chances and finding out if he could beat San in a fight.

"Baby," San said. No. "Love of my life." Better. Wooyoung let go of his throat. "I love you more than the sky loves the sun." Cringe, but cute. He didn't want to like it, but… why was San laughing again?

"Are you mocking me?" Wooyoung demanded, outraged.

San shook his head. "It didn't sound so embarrassing in my head," he laughed.

"I love you more than…" Wooyoung thought fast, "the sea loves the moon." Yep, that was embarrassing. At least they could cringe and laugh together.