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Five months before debut they took a day trip down to Cheonggye Mountain, all thirteen of them that were left, to wish for success. On the way there, Jeonghan kept twisting around in his seat to talk to Jisoo, who was leaning against the window in the seat next to Seungcheol, the morning light filtering ethereal over his hair through the glass and turning the strands a paler shade of brown, almost gold. Eyeing the proximity of Jeonghan’s elbow to Junhui’s sleeping face, Seungcheol offered to swap places with him, but Jeonghan only laughed like he knew something Seungcheol didn’t and waved him off.
Adore U was taking shape, beat by beat. They were adjusting to their new roles; Seungcheol still sometimes found himself frowning at the leader, main rapper written next to his name before remembering that was who he had to be, now. When they arrived at the mountain they climbed to the summit, stood against the bracing chill. Cast their openhearted hopes out into the clean white sky. Then all that was left was the downhill stretch home.
Backstage is always an jumbled deluge of sensory input—the glitter of sequined jackets in the dim light, the saccharine chemical smell of hairspray—and the fact that it’s the last of their promotions for this era only heightens the skein of restless energy humming under Seungcheol’s skin. He bows absently as BTS are ferried past him into the wings. He does a quick count to make sure they haven’t left anyone behind in the green room, which is a very real concern with so many people. When his eyes skim over Jisoo, Jisoo looks up, and their gazes mesh. Seungcheol flattens a palm over his thigh. Waits Jisoo out.
They have this thing going where Seungcheol will glance over at Jisoo to find that Jisoo’s already looking at him, or the other way around, and then they’ll exchange cautious half-smiles at being caught out, disconcerted by the sudden tentativeness. He supposes that’s just how it is; in a room with twelve other people you can't turn your head without making awkward accidental eye contact with someone else, but somehow or other his gaze always ends up finding Jisoo.
And Jisoo’s watching him, too. Sometimes Jisoo will just—look at him, eyes half-shuttered, a thoughtful curl to his mouth. Seungcheol notices because it’s the kind of detail he’s supposed to notice as a leader, cataloguing and categorising his members’ body language so he can respond even before they come to him: Hansol fiddles with zips or laces when he’s nervous but trying not to show it, Junhui tries to solve other people’s interpersonal problems by hanging off their shoulders, and Jisoo looks at Seungcheol through his lashes with the faintest hint of a smile. He doesn’t know how to categorise this. In the right kind of light it almost looks like Jisoo wants to kiss him.
“Heights.”
“Nah, that’s too boring,” says Seokmin. They’re between schedules, sitting on the ground beside the van, using the brief window of free time to run through the usual variety show fare: musical inspirations, ideal type, greatest fear. “You gotta say something like—”
“Alien abduction,” supplies Seungkwan. “Or, like, weirdly shaped crop circles.”
“As opposed to your regularly shaped crop circles,” says Jisoo.
“Obviously.” Seungkwan nods authoritatively.
“Okay, then, crop circles it is, I guess,” says Jisoo.
“Right! And you need to come up with something short and funny to explain why, something the editors can put in big letters across the bottom of the screen,” says Seungkwan. “It’s all about the follow-through.” He strikes a ridiculous pose, and Jisoo laughs, covering his mouth. Seungcheol’s heard the sound hundreds of times but it still strikes him oddly, and beside him Jeonghan shoots him a look that he ignores. “What about you, Coups-hyung?”
As a matter of fact, Seungcheol has this inexplicable but intense fear that when he opens his eyes and looks in the mirror after the makeup artists are done with him, his reflection will be unrecognisable. Like the careful layers of concealer and foundation and pigmented powder will have transformed him, between blinks, into a stranger. “Ah, nothing’s really coming to mind,” he says. “This hyung isn’t scared of anything!”
There’s a dubious silence. “Fireworks,” Minghao says, finally.
“Spicy food,” Jisoo says.
“I honestly can’t believe you just said that with a straight face, you’re scared of literally everything,” Jeonghan says.
Seungcheol throws his arms in the air. “Will any of you let me live,” he says.
“Ah, that’s good,” says Seungkwan, closing his eyes and nodding to himself. “If you can answer like that, hyung, you’ll be fine.”
There was a time back in late 2012 or so when he thought he was never going to debut, so drained by the endless choreo and interview training sessions that his body felt like it was submerged underwater or caught in the slow-motion horror of a bad dream, all of him blank, buoyant, emptied out. Nothing in this industry was certain. You could be slotted into a roster one day and taken off it the next. Upcoming, then not at all. There was no way of knowing for sure until you were standing out there on the stage, lights in your eyes, heart in your mouth—and even then. Even then.
Jisoo only trained for one month. Seungcheol thinks he should probably resent him for it, but that’s the kind of thing that gets ironed out of you when every waking second of your predebut days is filmed for broadcasting. The image wears so close to the truth it might as well be the truth. He can’t help thinking in camera angles, backdrop to the murmured instructions of the PDs: close up, track in, pan out.
Sincerity is exhausting. Remembering to respond to Coups is exhausting, though this, too, is something he’d chosen himself. Must be nice having the benefit of a stage name you’ve already spent your entire life going by, the real name an afterthought instead of the reverse, but again the resentment sluices away as soon as it rises, leaving only its softer, sweeter shadow behind. Longing, maybe. Something like that.
Practice is tough, but it always has been; it’s not their first comeback and it won’t be their last. It’s Soonyoung’s choreography, and when they get the hang of it Seungcheol knows it will look stunning, as it always does, but there’s hours and hours in the studio to go before they reach that point.
There’s this complicated part in the bridge that involves a rapid succession of syncopated steps followed by a falling motion arrested at the very last moment before gravity overtakes them. Junhui picks it up straight away, flowing through the movements like the rhythm’s wired into him. Seungcheol hasn’t managed to get the hang of it yet, keeps shifting his weight too far forward on the off-beat, then losing his balance and falling on his face; Jeonghan, the excellent friend that he is, laughs his head off first, before moving to help him up.
Jisoo’s struggling, too, but he hasn’t said anything. Seungcheol asks Soonyoung to count them through the bridge one more time, pretends not to notice the grateful look Jisoo shoots him.
“Remember to let your body weight follow through,” Soonyoung says, all indefatigable cheer, which is easier said than done. But even this early, when the majority of them are only marking out the beats, Seungcheol can already see the rough contours of the finished product, how the formations Soonyoung must have spent hours planning out will look arranged on a stage.
Honestly, it still doesn’t feel real. None of it feels real. In his spare time he watches blurry fancams, stage recordings, squinting at himself on the screen, the stage lights flashing off his figure in a way that renders him nearly unrecognisable, like he’s watching someone else inhabit his body through a pane of fogged-over glass. Rehearsals, performances, fansigns; they are all accustomed to the cameras by now, and their schedules barely give them space to breathe.
Most of the time he’s so tired by the end of the day that he passes out the second his back hits the mattress. Occasionally, though, he finds himself exhausted enough to loop right back around to wide awake, staring blankly at the dorm ceiling in the dark. Thinking, this is what you wanted. This is what you wanted, so see it through.
“Is there a reason you’re in here,” Jihoon says.
Truthfully, Seungcheol had expected Jihoon to kick him out a lot earlier, but he’d borne Seungcheol’s presence in the studio, balancing himself cross-legged on a chair and watching Jihoon put together a demo mix for the B-side track, in an almost companionable silence. Or maybe he just hadn’t noticed Seungcheol until now. For the sake of their ongoing friendship, Seungcheol chooses to believe it’s the former.
“We’re married, don’t you remember,” Seungcheol says, placing a hand over his heart. “Do I need a reason to spend time with you?”
Jihoon pins him with a flat look and doesn’t otherwise deign to respond to this, which gives Seungcheol the window of opportunity to mull over his not-really-a-problem with Jisoo, namely: how do you ask your bandmate whether or not he wants to kiss you? When he thinks about it like that it sounds mildly pathetic. Interview training never covered anything like this.
“Hypothetically speaking,” Seungcheol starts, and then stops. Wonders what he was about to say.
“Yes?” Jihoon prompts, pulling his headphones down.
“… Never mind,” Seungcheol says. He gets to his feet, shoots Jihoon a grin. “I’ll leave you to it, Woozi-ssi.”
Jihoon narrows his eyes at him and tugs his headphones back up over his ears in a clear dismissal. Seungcheol’s halfway out the door when he speaks again. “If you repeat this to anyone you know exactly what’s coming to you,” Jihoon says, without glancing up from the screen, “but—you know I’ll—” he grimaces, “—listen, if there’s anything you want to talk about.”
Seungcheol blinks, then flings himself back across the room to throw his arms around Jihoon. “Aw, I knew you loved me after all, Jihoonie,” he croons, resting his chin on Jihoon's shoulder.
“I take it back,” Jihoon says, but he allows the physical contact for a further five seconds before shoving Seungcheol away with a martyred expression. “Also, hyung, please don’t ever call me Woozi-ssi again, it’s fucking weird coming from you when we’ve known each other this long.”
It’s not that he dislikes the responsibility of the role. It’s just that he’s so tired, between playing mediator to the issues bound to crop up with thirteen boys in close quarters and the everyday demands of the industry, a constant balancing act. The collapse forward, the pull back to steady yourself moments before you hit the ground. Hard not to feel overwhelmed by it, his position unearned, when there are prodigies like Soonyoung and Jihoon under his lead, when this wasn’t what he trained for, in the beginning. Sometimes he wants to ask Jonghyun how he manages it, but after everything that’s happened between their shared trainee days and now it would only be twisting the knife.
Leader and eldest. He knows it gets him double the scrutiny, but either way he’s used to the feeling; he lives together with twelve other people, after all. Privacy is a luxury and all of them are broke. Besides, the cameras were everywhere during their trainee days, are still everywhere now. Everywhere he goes he inhabits the self he is on stage. It’s not even a conscious choice anymore. In fact, it’s very nearly a comfort.
He runs into Jisoo on the way back from the studio, just as he’s heading in for the preliminary recording of the new hip-hop unit track. Jisoo’s just dyed his hair silver and the colour catches Seungcheol off-guard for a moment, the way it brings the fine bones of his face into clearer definition.
“Joshua,” Seungcheol says.
“Coups,” Jisoo returns.
Seungcheol isn’t sure which name he’d expected or even wanted to hear, so he just smiles, waits for Jisoo’s answering smile, the gentle upwards curve of his eyes to match. Jisoo touches his shoulder as they pass each other. He thinks Jisoo might have been looking at his mouth.
Ten minutes into the recording session, Jihoon tells him sharply to focus. He blinks. Settles back into the version of himself that’s needed here, easy as letting out a breath, the other half of a reflex. “Sorry,” he says, rubbing the back of his neck, sheepish. “It won’t happen again.”
Some unconscionable hour after midnight. They’re sprawled out on the floor of one of the practice studios, Seungcheol angling himself for maximum contact between the wood and his heated skin, gratefully soaking up the chill. The insomnia always sets in around this time before a comeback and he can’t shake the sleeplessness, has in fact resigned himself to a lifetime of sleeplessness, or at least until—well, it’s far too soon to be thinking about that.
He’d gone to the studio almost on instinct, nothing else to do to whittle away the hours until wake-up, only to find Jisoo already there, running through the choreo for the title track. His eyes met Seungcheol’s in the mirror; wordlessly, he shifted aside to leave enough space for Seungcheol to do a few perfunctory warm-up stretches before joining him. No music in case they woke the others, but they hardly needed it anyway. Only the sound of Jisoo’s quiet voice counting them in, then the shuffle of feet on floorboards, again and again and again. Verse, chorus, verse, chorus, bridge, chorus. Their reflected figures flashing through the steps in near-perfect sync, the gap between movements narrowing a little more each time. Close enough to be chalked up to parallax error, a lapse in judgement.
His calves and shoulders ache, though it’s a pleasant burn, just on the right side of painful. If Soonyoung were here he’d probably scold them for not doing a proper cool-down. He voices this thought to Jisoo, who laughs, eyes crinkling up, and pushes himself upright, crosses his legs. It should be impossible to look good under the studio’s artificial wash of yellowy fluorescence, but Jisoo manages anyway, the light turning his profile sharp instead of sallow. Makes sense, after all; Jisoo hardly seems anchored to the physical world. If there’s going to be an exemption to any law of nature, it would be him.
“Couldn’t sleep?” Seungcheol says. The conversation’s all in the wrong order, but the moment feels surreal enough that it’s probably fitting.
Jisoo hums. “I guess. And I need the extra practice.”
Seungcheol glances at him, but Jisoo’s expression is placid, unreadable. “Not more than anyone else,” he says, at last.
Jisoo's smile is sharp enough to cut. “Don’t you think I’d be a better judge of that? You of all people—"
“Hey,” Seungcheol says. “I’m not—I don’t want to fight. I’m not Jeonghan.” That earns him a smile that's a little less bladed. “I know you want to do your best. Me of all people, I get it.”
Something about the set of Jisoo's shoulders softens. “Yeah, I know. Sorry. I shouldn’t have snapped at you.” He scrubs a hand over his face. “Do you ever just feel like one day you’re going to wake up and all of this will have just been a long and complicated dream?”
Seungcheol thinks about how small he looks on a screen, how little he resembles himself. “I hope I don’t wake up, then,” he says. “I like it here.”
“Me too.”
Silence again, broken only by the sound of breathing, slowly evening itself out, returning to an equilibrium. “Joshua Hong,” Seungcheol says, throwing an arm over his eyes. “Hong Jisoo. I don’t understand you at all.”
“Why? I’m not a very complicated guy,” Jisoo says.
“Sometimes,” Seungcheol says, “you look at me, and it kind of looks like you want to kiss me, maybe.”
Hands on his arm, moving it aside. Seungcheol blinks up at Jisoo, at the quiet amusement tugging at his mouth. “Do I now,” Jisoo says.
“Yeah,” Seungcheol says.
The light shifts over Jisoo, all gold and honey. Lengthening shadows. “Are you looking back?”
Seungcheol swallows. “Yeah.”
“Ah,” Jisoo says. He’s looking at Seungcheol in that considering way of his again. Carefully, he rests his fingertips on the curve of Seungcheol’s cheek, followed by his palm. Knuckle to wrist laid flat in increments, a movement like collapsing. Seungcheol breathes. Beneath Jisoo’s fingers Seungcheol feels his skin warm. He turns his head into the cradle of Jisoo's cupped hand, lips brushing against the base of his palm, and Jisoo lifts his eyebrows but he’s smiling, isn’t moving away. When Seungcheol sits up to kiss him properly it’s only the counterpart to an action begun long ago. Fingers laced on the nape of Jisoo’s neck, following through.
“So,” Jeonghan says, in the morning, levelling him with a significant look. Seungcheol takes a moment to ponder the increasingly likely probability that Jeonghan made some kind of demonic deal for omniscience, or is possibly a demon himself.
“What?” Seungcheol says. Wonwoo passes him a mug of coffee and he mumbles his thanks.
Jeonghan grins. Definitely a demon, Seungcheol thinks. “Oh, nothing,” Jeonghan says, singsong. “When are rehearsals starting, again?”
“Nine,” Seungcheol says, knowing full well that Jeonghan’s memory of their schedule is impeccable.
He doesn’t see Jisoo enter the kitchen because he has to break up a budding argument between Mingyu and Minghao before it escalates any further, and then it’s time to leave for dance practice anyway. All thirteen of them shuffle into the studio and it swells with sound, half a dozen overlapping conversations blurring into each other; Seungcheol finds himself reflexively doing a headcount, anchoring himself in the gesture. His reflection mirrors him, as it should. When he catches Jisoo’s eyes across the room, Jisoo tilts his head like they’re sharing a secret, and smiles.